Saved (Part 3)
by akanamilas
Summary: "I never imagined that when I finally managed to live, it would be when I died." A story following the lives of two women who's paths intersect under mysterious circumstances, and who end up being thrown forcefully into the worlds of two hopeless men. (Part Three) (Genkai deserves to have the ending dedicated to her, don't argue with me.)
1. Welcome Back

Part 3 {Battle}

I suppose that I should finish telling you my story. I really wish that I didn't have to, to be honest, because the ending has always been hard for me to tell, but I'll do my best.

There is a being above, that, in all of its infinite wisdom, gave the human race freedom. Freedom to love, freedom to live, freedom to choose, and freedom to destroy. Then we went off and it didn't take very long to introduce sin into the world. It took much longer for us to be capable of accepting the being's mercy and becoming a race that can be forgiven.

The being loved us though, so it gifted that mercy, even if it was at the cost of its own kin. It went through all of this just so that people like you and me could have life after death. I was given the gift of freedom and I freely chose destruction.

—

It was excessively quiet when I awoke. Perhaps that's what should have tipped me off. Like, as in, I woke up and the only thing that I could hear was my own breathing. It was pitch black and the floor underneath me had no substance. It was as if I was balancing on hardened air of some sort. I waved my own hand in front of my face experimentally, but it was clear as day. So, I was in a place that legitimately had nothing in it.

I wasn't based in reality then. Well, that was good to know. Pushing off of the floor, I went through the futile effort of dusting myself off even though there was nothing that could have gotten on me. Some wandering around revealed that I was, in fact, quite right in believing that there was absolutely nothing in this place I was trapped inside of.

I immediately commenced the act of praying to wake up, because I would go totally insane from boredom if that really was the case.

"Evaline." A familiar voice chastised. I jumped violently and decided that I must be imagining things. There was no way that I would ever have been able to hear that voice again, because the owner of it was otherwise belayed. "It's time to wake up." That voice repeated.

I hate dreaming. Sometimes I want so badly to believe that its real…

"Evaline." I try so, so hard not to be sucked in. "Come on, honey." But sometimes, I just can't help it.

"Evali- Eva." The voice changed. My diaphragm immediately halted any and all movement to keep me breathing and my muscles all locked into place at once.

"Look, I know you're angry." I felt a rising tide of unstoppable feelings and I nearly wished for that silence.

"I know that I hurt you." I wanted to scream 'excuses' at the top of my lungs and lash out in rightful vengeance.

"I know. And I'm sorry." There was a tiny crack, perhaps one that only I would pick up on. After all, I knew all of those voice quirks the best.

"But I need you to wake up."

My heart fell and then my eyes snapped open.

A wave of agony followed the action closely.

—

"So, what are you trying to tell me?" I asked, raising one eyebrow. The irate fire demon ground his jaw and narrowed his bright eyes at me.

"I know that you heard me." He sneered. I blinked, but was actually fighting back a smirk. "Don't play coy, fox."

"Well, why would the great Hiei need my humble talents?" I asked, the tiny smirk still tilting the side of my lip. He looked straight at me and I could see a little bit of how he was actually feeling. The smirk dropped off of my lips.

"She's gone." He finally spat, and I couldn't help but think that I was one of the few people who would be able to pick up on how upset he actually was.

I found myself at a loss of words for a moment or two. That was thoughtless of me to tease him like that. I should have known when I felt that spiritual pressure disappear that someone bad had happened, but it just hadn't really crossed my mind.

That was stupid. Nothing ever went well for very long, especially not when you hung out with the group that I did. Well, we were pretty well known for getting out of things at the last minute; so things usually ended for the best, but they were never boring! A humorless chuckle left my mouth and then I sighed.

"I knew that it was too calm." He rolled his eyes at me, but it sort of helped him see it in a better light. "She's not weak, Hiei." He scoffed and looked away, but I could see that he was listening and just slightly shook my head. "We'll find her."

At that he looked up and some of the somber mood did lift a bit.

"Yeah, same goes for you, you stupid fox." He said and I just closed my eyes and nodded. I knew that we would, I just didn't have quite as much certainty that we could even get the missing girl in question back. What if she was so far gone that-

"She's not. Have faith." And I just kind of deflated at that.

"I- Yeah." Then my mouth closed and we both went off to go find the rest of the group after a few beats of silence. It was all that we could do after all.

Anyway, so it took about twenty seconds to find Genkai and explain the situation concerning Angela and then we had to gather the rest of the group. Explaining the problem and coming up with a plan was significantly harder at that point. I almost wanted to just tell Yuusuke to wing it and see what he came up with. The guy had the luck of- well, not the gods, they had surprisingly bad luck- but of something fantastic, I suppose.

I'm not really going to sit here and argue the semantics of Yuusuke's luck with you; frankly, I have something far more interesting to talk about and that would be how we somehow found Angela and Eva safe and sound.

Well. You know, that's what I had hoped for anyway.

—

I was so done. Really, I had to be honest, I was so far beyond done, it might have actually been verging onto being over nine-thousand in its percentage count at that point. That is a freakishly high number, or were you not aware?

Anyway, as I was saying, I was done. Very done. Very, very- okay, I'm done. All right, I can't be the only one laughing at that terrible pun or my awful avoidance skills, right? So. What was I freaking out about? Well, I was freaking out because my dear soulmate (I have a really terrible soul-mate, just so you're aware) was being really odd, and I was really angry (worried) at (about) him. I also may or may not have also been recently kidnapped by a large bird.

At least, I think it was a bird. If it wasn't, then someone really needs some nail-filing. Those things were daggers in my shoulders. So, there's that stuff. But, frankly, it all completely pails in comparison to what I was truly freaking out about though — and that was that when I awoke I found that I couldn't see, I could barely move and I was completely unable to use my magic.

Did I have a right to panic at that point? Well, some people (Hiei) might have claimed that to be debatable, but I most definitely did not. The moment I lose control of my senses I begin to lose it and the magic was just icing on top of the cake. Oh, and did I forget to mention the screaming pain in my back whenever I moved too far?

Okay, okay, I was obviously in a really terrible mood. You didn't do anything, I was just very upset. It was an upsetting experience. So, let's just dive right into it shall we?

I jerked out of my half-doze at the sound of a squeaking door, trying to find the source, but it was simply too dark to see. There was a grunting noise and heavy footsteps, so probably my jailor or something. I thought about asking where I was and why in the world there was an insistence on having no light source, but the thing sounded really big so I decided to keep my mouth shut.

A few moments after said grunting there was a scuffle and then a thump not very far away from me. The hulking form that was big enough to _feel_ finally wandered off and I let out a shaky breath. The lump just barely a shade darker then its surroundings suddenly moaned and stirred. I bit down a squeal and went totally still, freezing up. If I jumped then I would hurt my back and just trust me when I tell you that it really hurt and leave it at that.

The form seemed to sit up and, thankfully, it appeared human shaped and far smaller then the huge form of my guard. I was hoping, in a sort of terrible, backwards way that this was a companion in my cell, as horrid as that would be of me, I didn't want to be alone. What if I had to stay there, bored and silent and potentially dying.

I would go so insane. So, yeah, needless to say I was kind of glad for the company.

Okay, back to the topic at hand. So, after the form finally found the strength to sit up correctly I gave it a few moments, hoping that it would introduce itself and identify as a human, not some terrible alien, but it seemed to stay pretty quiet, so I did the smartest thing to do when you meet a total stranger and that was to—

"Uh, hi?"

There was a funny wheezing noise closely following my intensely appropriate introduction and I got really confused, then it hit me that the other person was trying to talk or something but their voice was too shot for them to really be able to get the words out. Well, that was one way to make me feel like a terrible person. Embarrassment coloring my cheeks (not that the other person would be able to tell, seeing as it was pitch black) I decided to make them stop ruining their vocal cords and instead chose to simply chat with them. We were all alone in a dark place after all. They were a guest of sorts, I could at least make an attempt at entertainment.

"So. Welcome to the party." I said, chuckling dryly near the end. It was quiet and the wheezing went silent. "It's a real slice." I added a few seconds later. There was a beat of silence and I was afraid that my new room-mate wasn't going to talk or make any sounds at all, but I was in luck, she (it really sounded like a she) snorted out a laugh a moment later.

"Yeah, I'll just talk to myself, don't worry about it." I added quickly, getting the feeling that she was going to continue wheezing and whistling and making sounds that shouldn't come out of the human mouth. They weren't natural, so I would just chat it up and lie around, wondering what my fate was and why I was in that place.

I kept wondering too, in the back of my head. I wondered where I was, I wondered who I was with, I wondered about why I had been kidnapped. I wondered and wondered why I could never have anything go right; my entire life had been one long line of mistakes and bad breaks and that could be very upsetting after a while.

I wondered if Hiei was looking for me. I can admit that, it was something that wallowed in the back of my head, floated around, poked and prodded. Did he care? Was he worried? Why wasn't I getting hurt by the separation? Was he close by?

All of these questions pounded at my head constantly, like a breaking wave and I continuously frustrated myself by it. I was already in a lot of pain, in the dark, in captivity by who knows what. I didn't need to be spending this much time wallowing in my thoughts about some stupid idiot who I couldn't seem to get rid of.

So, time passed I suppose.

—

"Any luck?" I asked, pausing my pacing long enough to look at the prickly man beside me; he didn't even bother to open his eyes and answer me, he just shook his head, eyebrows furrowing.

"Didn't you just fucking ask me that same question less than five minutes ago?" He snapped, voice straining a bit. Sighing, I ran a hand through my hair and took a deep breath.

"The humans are wearing off on me, they're always in such a hurry." I answered, trying to explain my odd behavior. It was true, too; I was being oddly impatient. Normally I was the most patient out of anyone, in any dimension. I was renowned for my plotting and capability to plan ahead. It was practically legend. I shook my head at that. Legend. Hah, it was just good planning and clear, logical thinking. Also, a bit of luck, probably stolen from Yuusuke or something, because as many things as I was, lucky wasn't on the list.

I would even go as far as to claim myself unlucky.

I just felt like I was falling apart form the inside out. I felt like I was losing sight of what was most important to me even though my demon half was growing more powerful. I was in a place where I could get what I had wanted the most, and yet I only felt empty. I felt like if I made the choice to put my human life behind me, if I abandoned it now that my mother couldn't be in the picture anymore then I would not only be failing her, but myself as well.

She had wanted me to be happy. I couldn't be happy, not here, not alone, not going back to how I used to be. I had been miserable and it was only after being alleviated from that stress that I had realized how horrible I had truly felt. I had been so sad and my heart had been so heavy with all of the failures that I had made that, how could I want that back?

How could I not want my human life? I had always held onto the idea that love was stupid, but really, what was I thinking. It wasn't useless, or dumb. I had been shown that love by my mother and it had changed me into something I didn't even believe that I could be. Then I had been shown that adoration again, but not by something I was going to lose the next day, or the next week. I would have it for as long as I wanted it and my mother had known that. She had felt that and she had wanted me to have that, how could I turn away something that beautiful?

I couldn't.

I couldn't just say, 'well, that was it, it was fun'. I couldn't just say goodbye to that happiness. She was searching and waiting, I knew that and she had that horrible faith in me. She had that belief that I would pull through. She had expected me to be an idiot. I could see that disappointment, but I could also see her just waiting. Waiting for me to see my mistake, waiting for me.

She had been so sad though, and that sadness had overwhelmed her. I had failed her and she had drowned under the pressure. I would say that it was because she had such slim shoulders, but there was something there that I felt I was missing, something that I couldn't see and it weighed down on her more heavily than anything else. I didn't know if it was regret, or sadness, or just sheer loss of innocence.

Some people are forced to grow up very quickly and she had lost that innocence so quickly. She had been exposed to the horrors of the world. A loose nerve ending continuously prodded until it shriveled up and died.

Eva was waiting.

I wouldn't fail.

—

My head felt like it was going to crack into two when I finally found her. Relief flooded through my system as I felt the connection flicker and then, miraculously, hold. It was the first time, however, that I felt her thoughts not only immediately pick up on my intrusion, but grab it and hold me there. It was as if she was crooning over what was there and it was then that I realized that she was sleeping.

'Hiei, what are you doing here?' Her smooth voice murmured, and I froze up, unable to really answer. I didn't know if it was because I was overwhelmed by her presence, or if I was just nervous, but something was keeping me from feeling truly relieved.

There was a silence and then that haze lifted and she shook off her doze, waking up with a startled vengeance.

'Woah, since when has this been a thing?!' She yelped, rather loudly. The tension left my shoulders in a huge huff and I found myself relieved that she hadn't changed and that she was fine and that Angela was still Angela.

I still couldn't answer that question, though. How was I supposed to explain to her that I had always been able to hear her thoughts without her freaking out? I mean, no matter how you cut it, Angela was Angela and she did not take bad news very well. I might even say that she took it quite violently. So, I just chose not to say anything at all.

She stayed silent as well and I couldn't practically hear her clenching and unclenching her jaw. I went to listen in on where she was going with this, but hit a practical brick wall. Okay, so she just learned how to do and control telepathic communication overnight. Okay.

What.

'About six months.' I finally said bluntly, unable to bear the silence any longer. It was freaking me out that she wasn't absolutely flipping her shit over this, but who was I to say, I couldn't see her after all. I could only hear her and feel what she was doing. I wondered if she could feel that overlay too. It had originally been irritating, constantly able to feel the ghostly movements and hunger and headaches of someone that wasn't me, but eventually it became something that I grew attached to.

When she had disappeared and that connection had abruptly halted, I had fallen into such a panic that it nearly rivaled how I felt the first time my arm was burned by my dragon. She was tame enough then, but not so much before that. The only reason I hadn't spiraled into a craze was because I knew that if she was dead, I would be too, so I had to have faith that she was fine.

And here she was.

Just fine.

'What?!' She yelled. Ah, there it was. I was beginning to wonder if I was dreaming again. 'Were you ever planning on telling me?!' She continued; I only raised an eyebrow and moved into a more comfortable position, resting my head against my fist.

'I was hoping that I wouldn't have to.' I admitted, surprising even myself with my own honesty.

She was apparently quite shocked too, because her blockage against her own thoughts lifted and I found myself overwhelmed by a sudden barrage of feelings and thoughts, it was loud.

There was annoyance and frustration and disappointment, there was a rattling amount of sadness, but there was one feeling that absolutely dwarfed everything else, and that was a sense of elation.

I don't even know if I could correctly describe how much it just overwhelmed any other emotion because spoken language is just not made to capture things of that kind of monstrosity. You can try, but you have to know how something like that feels to understand. I had never felt something like that before, but I knew that I had felt something similar when I had the knowledge that Angela was safe and sound and still intact, just not quite to that level.

My cheeks began to burn as I realized that her sense of pure happiness was directly related to me and my efforts to find her. Oh.

She seemed to come back to reality and in a moment of vibrant embarrassment snapped her thoughts shut. Whenever she had learned that, she had only learned it enough to be able to use the ability because she was no master by any stretch of the imagination. Sighing, I couldn't help thinking that she was kind of over-reacting. I had been able to hear her thoughts for months, although that was why her excitement was surprising. Her thoughts regarding me had never been positive, only neutral on the best of days, hateful on most.

I couldn't help wondering what had changed, but of course she would never tell me. Angela was rather tight-lipped about how she felt and what upset her or made her happy. I was very similar, so it didn't really bother me, but it had never been much of a guessing game, I just had to listen to what she was thinking about — which had been fairly embarrassing on more than one occasion. It was also interesting to know that even her thoughts had a tight reign on them, there were many things that she would stop herself from thinking about (which included me) and other times when she would seem to hold entire conversations and arguments with herself.

Her thoughts were interesting, and they had also been very distracting on more then one occasion. Shaking off my train of thought, I went back to waiting for her answer.

'You so owe me dinner after this.' She finally snapped and then the connection closed.

I sat in almost complete silence for a few minutes, just sort of stewing in shock and then, finally, belatedly, I swore rather loudly and rejected that we had ever held a conversation.

I made a split second decision to find Kurama and get on to finding Angela. Her coordinates definitely held some interest to them.

"Hiei, to what do I owe the pleasure?" He asked, straightening up from whatever he had been doing. Probably devising some sort of horrible way to kill someone- or just finishing up paperwork, either one.

"I found her." I said, trusting him to know what I was talking about. The gloom around the redhead lifted and he nearly grinned, turning toward me fully.

"Really now. Where?" He asked. I closed my eyes and then reopened them a few seconds later.

"My territory." I stated flatly, feeling an impressive amount of irritation reflected in my voice.

It looked like it was time to head home.

—

A droplet of sweat hit the floor and a muffled scream echoed in the darkness, teeth grinding down into a piece of fabric with all of the strength a jaw could muster. Another pained cry echoed in tandem with a crack and a sharp burst of pain down my spine.

A small hand continued to dab the side of my face with cold water as I struggled to get my back to go back into place.

Hot drops of something pooled in the small of my back as I continued to tremble and I simply prayed that it was only sweat. Finally, I got far enough up and the small body in front of me shifted around to my back and then those small hands were quick to crack everything back to where it should be so I could heal.

The rag dropped out of my mouth as I screeched in pain, feeling my brain go fuzzy and my prison-mate held me up so I wouldn't collapse and nullify the work we had done. I couldn't try and heal it with magic, something about this room kept me from being able to use it and if I tried to anyway, I would be tasered.

A magic taser.

Who knew, right?

Anyway, so as the pain began to ebb enough for me to think I realized that I had failed to think about how Hiei would react when he felt the pain I was going through. Oops. And now he was flipping out on the other end of our connection. Bracing myself, I opened it and was surprised not to hear just swearing, but a lot of worry too.

'What the actual fuck!' He yelled. I rolled my eyes and then winced as I moved on accident. 'You forgot, didn't you?! You actually fucking forgot that I had to feel that!'

This time my wince was from him being right. I _had_ forgotten and all though you couldn't exactly blame me for not wanting Hiei to know that I was in pain, you couldn't write off my oversight of how worried he would be.

'I… sorry.' I said quietly. My head was still spinning, so it was hard to think, but I could at least apologize. I owed him that. He sighed heavily and rubbed his face with his hands. I noted that he really need to cut his hair.

'Fuck. It's fine.' He finally spat, and then we just sort of sat in silence. 'I just, I just wish that you would- have let me help… or something.' He added haltingly. It took me a moment to comprehend that he had just told me how much he wished he could have supported me and I felt my face heat up. Those questions that had been screaming in the back of my mind suddenly went very quiet and I felt my lip tremble.

'I…' A sniffle cut me off and I rubbed my eyes. 'Yeah. Okay. I'll remember.' I finally said and I knew that he would understand what I meant. I wasn't the only one who only wanted someone to care. We both claimed that it didn't matter, but it did. It really did.

The silence began to turn awkward and I tried to wrack my tired brain for something to talk about.

'So… where am I?' I asked.

'You don't know?' I almost wanted to smack him and say 'don't be coy,' but it was just too ingrained in his personality. He couldn't breath without some form of sarcasm.

'It's a little dark.' I said, and then realized that I could just let him have access to my eyes. It only took me a few seconds to do just that.

'Wow. No kidding.' He stated dryly, and then hesitated. My eyebrows furrowed. 'You're…in the dungeons below my house.' He whispered and I could almost hear the rage beginning to build in his voice. What. I mean, it was almost a good thing that he could figure out where I was and that at least I was in a place he made, that made me feel somewhat better and, admittedly, I was frankly pissed to be in confinement, but… that's what happened when you lead the kind of life that I did.

This wasn't the first time that I was in some sort of jail, though I was hoping that it would perhaps be my last.

'Hiei.' I murmured, trying to chill him out enough to ask him my questions. He took a deep, shuddering breath and then let it out. I carefully continued. 'So… How long have I been here?" I asked, almost too nervous to hear the answer, but wanting to anyway.

'Two weeks and a day.' He answered automatically and once again, I just wanted to reach through our mental connection and kiss him silly for being unwittingly sweet. He had kept track. Really, really well. That meant something, especially when it was Hiei. 'It's about time I found you.'

Oh man. I rubbed at my chest, glaring down at my heart.

Traitorous thing wouldn't stop pounding.

'Are you coming?' I asked, my voice falling to a whisper.

There was a beat of silence and then:

'As fast as I can.'

—

Sidetracking to pick up Angela was taking up more time then we had. Every moment we were in Demon World, Kurama slowly continued to lose control and become darker and, frankly, more terrifying. I might be able to beat him on a good day, but only with luck on my side, and he was losing control of the part of him that was moral.

He was trying, but you could see it wearing on him, those thoughts of what he should do, what was right and that other part of him that said the exact opposite. Violence and death were common in Demon World. We had such long life spans because most of the time you didn't die of sickness or something, you died because someone murdered you in your sleep or challenged you to a fight or something.

Strength was the currency, not money. Even the best relationships included brawls, it was just how our race functioned. Frankly, I was rather curious to see what would happen to Angela after she completely morphed into a demon.

I was also curious to see what would happen the first time she tried to wake up a sleeping demon. Sleep rage was a pretty terrifying thing, I was curious to see how she would take it. Humans wake up and they're very slow and groggy, demons have an automatic instinct to wake up quickly and violently.

Normally it was a good thing that kept you alive, but you couldn't decide to only react to certain things, so sometimes you could end up accidentally hurting someone close to you because they decided to come too close.

We couldn't just decide not to go get Angela though. I was… too attached for that. I had never kept my Jagan Eye open for more then eighteen hours at a stretch, and yet I had kept it on for almost two weeks, give or take a few moments. I was now drawing on Angela's magic reserves as well, although she wasn't aware of such an intrusion. She couldn't use it anyway was what I had decided and if she wanted me to rescue her, then she was just going to have to trust me with her power.

I knew how to get back to my own house of course, but I had to know what we were up against and the closer we got, the more on edge I felt. The spiritual pressures that I was picking up on were decidedly not demon or human and that made me very, very nervous. And annoyed; but what else was new?

'So, what have you been doing?' Angela asked. The connection had been open continuously since we had come back into contact and she was seemingly quite giddy about being able to talk to me for long periods of time. Admittedly, I had never met anyone who could keep up with my sarcasm quite as well as her. She always seemed to know exactly what I meant.

It was like another Kurama, but less devious and disturbing.

'Throwing parties and dancing the hula.' I snapped, rolling my eyes.

'Um, Hiei, I hope you know that I am never going to erase this picture of you out of my head.'

And the worst part was, I had to see her mental picture too. It was one of the more horrible things that I had been exposed to.

Suddenly, Angela yelped and then her voice broke off.

'Hiei, they're-'

I blinked and held a hand to my ear, as if that was going to help.

"Angela?!" I yelled, knowing that actual sound was more powerful then a thought. There was nothing. Just silence.

No static, no impression, not even any feeling to know what was happening. Once again, we were disconnected. I cursed.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fucking-"

"Hiei, calm down, what happened?" Genkai asked, having stopped with Kurama further ahead after my abrupt bout of shock and yelling. I looked up, clenching my jaw.

"I can't hear her. Something's wrong." I snarled. "We need to go. Now."

I took off, trying to go as fast as I could, but Demon World was huge and it didn't have technology like Human World. Besides, I could run faster than a car.

I couldn't help the panic that I felt though. She was tough, but what if something happened? It was a very foreign feeling. I had never been quite so worried about anything except for maybe Yukina and she was my sister. I didn't even know how to place the things that were happening to me; but I knew that no matter what, I had to find her. I just had to hope that my soul was leading me in the right direction and have faith.

I had never been good at faith _or_ hope.

—

The huge hand dug into my face as I groaned with pain. My small room-mate was holding onto my foot, but another wave of that huge hand and she was lying on the floor across the cave, out cold. The bright light dug into my eyes and I was nearly crying in pain. I hadn't been able to see in weeks, it hurt horribly, even with my eyes squeezed shut.

I tried to bite the giant hand suffocating me, but couldn't open my mouth enough and my back was such a distracting source of pain that I was beginning to wish that I could be in my cellmate's position, unconscious and unable to feel anything at all.

My vision began to get hazy and I wondered how this had all happened. I had just been sitting and talking to Hiei, waiting for our daily source of food to magically appear when suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps was echoing close by and I froze, trying to go hide, but I couldn't move because of my physical state and had to stay still and hope that nothing bad was happening.

Maybe there was just going to be another prisoner, but I knew that I was just grasping at straws. Hiei was getting close and that meant that they were probably coming for me. I was the one in here that was captured probably as some form of bait. It was hard to say, but that was the feeling that I got.

I felt as if luring Hiei here was the idea, but there was nothing we could do, if he got too far away from me we would both get hurt, so it just had to work like it was at that second. We just had to keep trying to escape, and he had to keep heading toward me.

I hadn't expected that my captors would want to hurt me though, it just didn't seem to add up, but perhaps the idea was to incapacitate me so that I wouldn't be able to fight when I was brought to where I was certain Hiei would be. That was usually how it worked anyway.

Black dots flashed in the edges of my eyes and my vision began to tunnel. I was struggling for breath and my lungs were absolutely screaming, but I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't even try to fix anything. I was too weakened from weeks of no physical activity, partial meals and bad sleep and still trying to heal from a serious injury on top of that.

It was a miracle I was still moving at all, to be frank. As I went unconscious, I knew that I would have a killer headache upon awakening.

And I just hoped that nothing terrible would happen while I was incapable of protecting anyone.

—

Hiei's panic seemed to grow worse with each passing moment, similarly to my rising levels of insanity, and Genkai wasn't as young as she once was. We were all nearing the edge of our rope. I could see that we were probably walking into a trap, but there wasn't very much that we could do about that. Eva was still nowhere to be found, and we couldn't get too far away from Angela without Hiei collapsing.

We were in a bind. Suddenly, something came to me in a flash of inspiration and I made a split-second decision that actually very well might have saved our lives.

"Yuusuke." The man looked up from where he was running, still easily going full tilt, the guy wasn't one of the most powerful demons in Demon World for nothing after all. "You and Kuwabara need to head back to Human World." He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. I really didn't have enough to time to explain correctly, but he needed to do it. He and Kuwabara were the only ones who could separate from our group and look for Eva. "Just do it." I said and his mouth snapped closed, he glanced at Kuwabara, who looked much more hesitant, but then they both nodded and stopped.

Hiei glanced at me, but didn't bother asking, because of all people, he was aware that I knew what I was doing.

Yuusuke ripped open a portal a moment later and then they both disappeared, the tear in space time snapping shut behind them. Looking forward, I then glanced at Genkai, who looked like she was well-aware of what I was about to say.

"You wait far out of range. I want to make sure that if something goes wrong, we're not all trapped inside." I said.

There was that rising feeling in me that something big was about to happen and we weren't seeing the whole picture just yet. Genkai slowed and then disappeared from my line of vision. Both Hiei and I turned completely forward, ready to face whatever seemingly invisible foe was ahead of us. We still couldn't seem to tell what exactly was lying in wait back at Hiei's house, but we were now prepared. The only thing that needed to happen was a break before facing whatever was ahead.

It took almost an hour to get close enough to stop. We didn't want to be going in looking rushed and exhausted, even though that's exactly what we were, we needed to go in looking well-rested and powerful. If we looked weak, we were going to get taken advantage of and that was the last thing that either of us needed. We were already running out of time.

It would be a miracle if Eva was still in that body and not completely destroyed, the longer we took, the more likely it would become that she wouldn't be alive anymore at all. I didn't know if I could handle losing another person who was important to me.

We were both winded and sweating when we stopped. I could see the strain on Hiei's face and he closed the Jagan Eye with a heavy sigh, slumping against a tree. He must have been near falling over to be willing to do that in front of another person, especially another demon who was, admittedly, beginning to lose their sanity.

My head was keeping up a steady pounding by that point and I was beginning to feel nauseous. It was hard to think and when I really needed my head to be clear, that was a huge, screaming issue. No pun intended.

Undoing my hair-tie, I ran my fingers through my hair, checking to make sure that I was well-armed before brushing it with my fingers and using a little bit of magic to get it looking presentable.

Hiei did the same when fixing his clothing and clearing off any sweat.

When we could both breathe and looked as good as we ever would we took off with a nod. And a little bit of a prayer.

—

I was dozing, I guess. Eventually, complete silence gets to you. You sing, you dance, you murmur stories to yourself, you cry, then you reach a point at which there's nothing to do but think. So, I just… I just thought about stuff. I never got tired, or hungry, or thirsty. I never really needed to move or go to the bathroom. I just had hours and hours of excess time to sit around and think.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Life doesn't discriminate in dealing you bad cards, or giving you choices that sometimes seem too hard to bear. I have a lot to learn, and not enough time to do it; and I've made mistakes. I've made choices that I wish every day I could take back, and only on the good days, do I realize how necessary they were.

I have to keep on telling myself that I didn't have another choice. I have to keep on telling myself that everything was necessary. Most days aren't good days.

Most days I sit, curled up, trying to tell myself that it's okay. There was nothing in the darkness, nothing was trying to get me, nothing was going to eat me, nothing was going to attack me. There was nothing out there. I had to hide my face and pray that what I was saying was true.

I kept on trying to believe it.

Most days were bad days.

I would close my eyes, but horrible things lived on the backs of my eyelids. I could wake up, and nothing could hurt me, but I was alone. There are some things that you just can't heal from. I couldn't heal from everything that I had gone through. I couldn't truly believe that nothing was going to hurt me, because I had been living in that state of paranoia for too long.

Things did hurt you.

I just had to keep on repeating one line like a mantra, one line that continuously lived in my head. Someone very important had said it, and I was beginning to realize how much I had taken that person for granted.

'_It's okay. You're okay. I'm right here. It's going to get better._' I kept on trying to believe it, but I couldn't. He wasn't there. I kept hoping that he would be, but how could he even reach me when even I didn't know where I was.

I was so afraid that I would be lost in the darkness forever and that I would be alone.

I still held onto that hope, though.

I just kept holding on.

—

I was correct in my assumption. When I woke up, I did have a really terrible headache; in fact, I may have even made the claim that it was one of the worst that I had ever experienced, but it wouldn't have been a true claim. Sadly, I had woken up in worse states before.

Deciding to forgo opening my eyes for a moment, I sucked in a deep breath, coughing a bit because my throat was dry, and then shifted a bit. Well, suffice it to say that it really wasn't my best idea. A few choice words tumbled out of my mouth and I froze, face contorting with pain.

It was really becoming a trend to wake up that way. I wasn't certain of how I felt about that. It was kind of exciting in its own right, but consistently waking up in pain was… unenjoyable. I mean, I could have at least gotten a good night out of it before-hand after all, but no…

Gritting my teeth, I gathered up my will and cracked open my eyes. I thanked Jesus that it was fairly late in the day, because even that dim light pierced my retinas with mind-blowing anguish. It was quite silent and there wasn't much around (well, not much that I could see anyway) so I just went through the methodical process of checking to make sure that everything was mostly in working order.

Not really.

As a matter of fact, I was probably in something that sounds a bit more like 'less-then-stellar' order, and that was coming from someone who spent most of their time getting into life-threatening situations.

My back was doing all right, but I still felt pretty beat up. I could at least move though. Going slowly, I began by simply flexing my hands, then my feet and moved until I had come to a sitting position. My stomach was complaining and I really had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn't looking at my legs (all that hair looked really spectacular, by the way) and wondering if they could really support my weight.

They were thin from disuse and dirty from weeks with no shower. That's when I became aware of exactly how nasty I really was. My hair felt caked to my head and I was streaked with dirt and sweat and my whole body just throbbed with pain, only focused in particular areas.

Basically, I looked and felt like a pile of crap.

Searching the room that I was in, I began to note that it was actually a fair improvement from my last holding place. I was on a cot (which was probably the only reason I could move at all), and there were some sparse decorations. It looked like a room, but now that I was actually at least halfway awake, I could nearly taste the magic in the air. It absolutely saturated my surroundings and I began to wonder if this was what the room looked like at all. This thought distracted me for a moment, but then my bladder reminded me why I had been looking around in the first place and magic became unimportant to me.

Standing up slowly, I actually rather relished the stretch in my muscles. I didn't fall over or anything because I had been rather abnormally strong before this detour. Patting my stomach, I sighed, realizing that I had avoided chub only because I had barely been fed.

Squeezing my eyes shut to clear my head, I began to wander to a door on the other side of the room. Walking made me feel nauseous, and the ambient light from the ceiling made my eyes throb.

"God, who the fuck decided that this was a good idea?" I growled, my voice dry and scratchy. Resting my fingers on the doorknob, I pushed it open. Well, nothing bad had happened, so I continued, realizing that if I didn't find the ladies room, there were going to be some serious problems.

I got lucky. That was my only decision. On the first door that I decided to try, which was across the hall, not only did I find a full bathroom, but I found a store of towels and clothing; which was fantastic, because I really didn't want to look at my shorts and t-shirt. There were duly stripped off along with everything else and the only thing that kept me from actually taking a flying leap into the shower were the wounds covering my body.

I could see though! Even if the bathroom wasn't huge, the water was hot and steamy, there was soap and I knew how to shave with magic. I probably could have cleaned up with magic too, but there was something about a hot shower that was just perfect in a way that magic just couldn't replicate. I needed the simple routine of cleaning myself.

So, I got out of the shower, I got on new clothes, I brushed and dried my hair, I correctly cleaned up my face, I even made myself smell nice. I felt like a new woman and my mood just kept rising with each passing second.

"Now this, this is how it should be." I sighed, my voice sounding much smoother, if not a bit quiet and low. Sighing, I returned to my cot after stripping off all of the covers (I had just gotten clean, I wasn't going to doze on a nasty bed) and then just sat down to think for a while. My mental connection with Hiei was blocked, I was still quite injured, my magic reserves were full, but I was worried about what would happen if I used a lot at once.

That was when I remembered the aura saturating everything around me and felt like a total retard. Flexing a bit, I focused really hard and with a bit of magic more draining then I had expected, my bonded sword popped into existence in front of me. It clattered to the floor and I just stared at it for a while. Finally, my shoulders slumped forward and I dropped my face against my hand.

"Couldn't you bring your other half, too?" I finally muttered, staring at the innocent sword lying on the floor. It hadn't done anything bad to me, but I wanted its counterpart and the person who went along with it. Frankly, I wanted Hiei to hurry up and get to wherever I was, which was apparently where he lived, or something.

Staring at the door, I finally made the decision to get up and go have a look around. I had my magic, I was protected, I had my sword and besides, this was Hiei's house, or castle or something. After all, what house has dungeons?

Groaning, I pushed back to my feet and scooped my sword up off of the floor. Purposefully, I went to the door and cracked it open, checking to make certain that the coast was clear. Naturally, the place was rather foreboding and dim, magic heavy in the air. It didn't feel like Hiei's magic though and that irked me for whatever reason. If this was his house, it should feel like him.

Ignoring the shiver creeping up my spine, I passed through the doorway and into the world on the other side.

I should have noticed the ripple of energy over me as I walked out of the door.

I didn't.

—

"Ah, as I thought." Kurama noted under his breath. Glancing sideways, I saw him shake his head at me. Frowning, I decided to trust the fox. He had proven time and time again that he knew what he was doing. "Watch your back." He said, and it was his only warning before going completely silent.

Fighting the shiver creeping up my spine, I focused on running the last few minutes to my own castle. We had passed into my territory probably an hour before that, but there had been nothing. If anything, it was too quiet. Something wanted us here, that was for sure. We were probably walking into some sort of trap or another, but it's not like there was another choice on hand, or that would have been what we would go for.

Whatever was on my land had not only intruded, but had kidnapped and beaten my soul-bonded partner. Angela would disagree on the choice of wording, but I wouldn't have asked for her opinion anyway. She was a bit of a feminist and it was annoying.

I suddenly found myself rather glad that she couldn't hear my thoughts right now. It was technically physically impossible, but she would have found a way to beat me within an inch of my life for so much as implying that women were inferior in any way shape or form. I didn't really care either way, if anything I was-

Distracting myself from the topic at hand, that's what I was doing. Something about the air and the dead silence weighing down on my body just put me on edge. It was almost like-

"Fuck." I swore as we finally broke over the last hill and laid eyes on the intruders of my territory.

I should have known that it would the fae. I just should have known. The odd spiritual signature, the creepy silence, the magical pressure in the air, they were all things that just screamed out the presence of the fae. Now I was glad that Kurama had warned me because I probably would have flipped my shit and started killing things without as second thought had he not expressly told me to keep my head. If we were going to get Angela out of there alive and in one piece and my territory in one piece and any kind of information, we were going to have to be careful.

The fae were conniving, irritating and, worst of all, old enough to back up their stupid pride. They made demons lives look short and a human's life look absolutely miniature. They were also freakishly beautiful, something that I had fallen for at a much younger age. It was one of the many stupid things that I did during my phase of interest in the female gender.

That didn't last very long. I was too bloodthirsty, too violent and I got bored easily. Women were annoying, simple as that.

'Hiei…' A voice whispered from inside of my head. I nearly leapt out of my skin in surprise, but then recognized who had finally managed to reconnect. Slowing to a walk, I settled a hand onto my sword and the other into my pocket. Kurama seemed a bit antsy, but that was probably just because he wanted to get this over with as fast as possible and go find Eva, but he also knew that this would take a while.

The fae were expressly prohibited from being in Demon World the same way demons were barred from entering Human World. The mix was just too dangerous and too likely to become catastrophic.

They were crafty though, and getting them to leave without giving into their demands or causing a battle would be difficult. It was terrible timing too, what with the Demon Tournament planned to begin in two days. You could see our short time frame to work with. The fae would suck up at least a day if we were lucky, probably more, and I was having a hard time getting a solid read on Eva because the angel commandeering her form wouldn't stop teleporting about.

It was up to something and I began to feel uneasy about the fae having to just so happened to show up and cause problems at the same time.

'Angela. About time.' I snapped, secretly rather relieved that she was still functioning enough to contact me.

'Hurry.' She whispered, then the connection went dead again.

I spoke too soon.

—

Wobbling as if made of jelly, I found myself hard pressed to stand. Something didn't want me moving any further, but I wasn't going to just wait to become bait. I couldn't just stand around pretending that everything was going to work out just because I had cried distress to Hiei.

Real life didn't work like fairytales did. Besides, I wasn't the type to just sit around waiting for my knight in shining armor to show up anyway. It just wasn't in my personality to act like that. I was too cynical to believe that I would ever be saved if I didn't do everything myself, although I at least had some faith in Hiei.

He would come. I knew that he would, so I just had to be ready for when he did.

Still, this was proving to be a challenge. Someone had set up barriers around the area that I was trapped inside of and it felt like a huge amount of weight was pressing down the further I went toward the end of the hallway I was in. You couldn't even tell that the thing existed until you walked into it and suddenly found your fifty pounds heavier and crouching down like some old lady with a sliding walker. Every detail in perfection, right down to the sliced open tennis balls that secretly polished the floor.

I was actually getting past the walker now though. It was getting increasingly difficult to stay of my feet and not simply collapse to the floor, but I figured that it had to end at some point, right? There had to be some place where I would suddenly break free of the pressure.

I wasn't finding it though, and it was only getting heavier. I was beginning to have a hard time breathing and my ears were popping. It was incredibly painful.

Thankful for my powerful sword, I leaned my weight against it, curling over the elongated metal stick in hopes that it wouldn't pierce my chest. I ended up having a pommel-shaped bruise when that was all over.

Gritting my teeth, I yelled out and slid the last few feet before finally breaking free with an almost palpable pop. A yellow burst of light shimmered from behind me as I groaned, rubbing my neck from where I had popped up fast enough to get whiplash.

"Thank Jesus, son of Mary." I said. "Its over. Hallelujah." For a nearly solid minute I just stood with my eyes closed, gasping for breath and celebrating my victory. If you're curious as to why I didn't just take my magic to the barrier, it's because taking those things apart was technical and difficult and I did not possess the talent to do it.

That was something that was more up Kurama's alley then mine and Hiei's. Regardless, I got through, more or less without help. Glancing at my sword, I wondered how much support I had really gotten from it. That was made to keep me in, someone who could make a barrier like that wasn't going to put anything on me that it thought I could handle.

I decided to ignore it. A bonded sword had always been a mysterious type of magic and I wasn't going to understand everything about it just because I took to staring at it for long periods of time. I needed to get going, it was hard to say when someone was going to realize that I was out and I didn't have the capacity to correctly defend myself. I was still beaten up and severely weakened from weeks of little to no physical exercise.

I was a hurting unit.

Pushing the tip of my sword into the floor with a clang, I returned to my feet and took a careful look around. To my surprise, the floor and walls were no longer styled in a japanese fashion, but in true, creepy castle fashion. Everything was stone, with witch-light torches as the only illumination. There was sparse decoration, which didn't surprise me, if this was Hiei's castle.

Something just didn't add up to me though. The guy never would have put in this kind of effort to make a castle. He wasn't one for material possessions. I shivered, rather put off by my surroundings. Glancing behind me, I saw that hall simply extended. There was no sign of the place that I had just come from. There were lots of things that magic could do, but I found it increasingly odd that I could have the wool pulled over my eyes so easily.

I mean, it's true, I had once been a lot stronger and I was out of practice and exhausted, but even I was observant enough to pick up on veils. Nerves began to build in my stomach.

If I hadn't even noticed, then that couldn't only mean one thing. I was up against some really powerful foes. And I was alone.

"Oh boy."

Taking a deep breath, I picked my sword up off the floor and slid it back into its sheath. Now that I was outside of that barrier and into open territory, I needed to take some healing magic to my back. I had full reserves. Hell, even my sword had full reserves. If I didn't use some magic, I was probably going to explode.

Over the course of the next few minutes, I returned to workable form and began to make myself look more presentable.

If I had to fight a pile of demons, I was going to look good doing it. Call me vain, but I wouldn't disagree. I was vain. Some part of me also thought that it would be kind of nice if when Hiei saw me next, I didn't have to look like a total retard either, he already had issues with respect. Somewhere in my head, I knew that he respected Kurama and Yuusuke, and maybe even Kuwabara to some extent. Or at least trusted him.

It was much harder to tell with me. I think that he at least had some measure of faith in me, which was at least progress. He didn't really _like_ anyone, but in all honesty, I knew the feeling. I was far nicer and more trusting, and I could at least like people to an extent, but I preferred to be alone over hanging around people.

Or at least, that's how I used to feel. I had been alone so much though, that I had this yearning just to see people and hear voices that weren't yelling or crying or otherwise in distress. I had gotten the chance to interact with Hiei a few times, but we mostly just argued and I could only hear his thoughts. I wanted people in front of me. I wanted to chat with Genkai, and fight with Yuusuke and argue with Kuwabara. I wanted to prattle along at Eva and Yukina, two people that I eventually began to unconsciously protect.

I missed the small things.

Pursing my lips, I stood and stretched my shoulders out, then finally looked back forward, feeling more determined then ever.

I needed to get back to Hiei, destroy the stupid people who thought they could trap me, and then find Eva.

Right then.

—

"This is not what I planned on doing when I woke up this morning."

A snort came from beside me as Kurama shook his head.

"Behave." He warned, not turning away from the exotic creatures staring us down.

There were only three of them in sight, but the feeling of death-stares boring into my back told me differently. There were six in hiding, spaced out around us fairly evenly, hidden by the trees. I didn't want to fight, but only because it would serve to slow us down. Connecting to Genkai via telepathy, I told her to warn the council of what was happening. Now that I was certain, it would be a bad choice not to notify them, as much as the stupid pompous assholes irritated me, they did get the job done and right then, Kurama just needed me to get Angela and then leave.

We really couldn't afford to stay.

"We have been expecting you." The one in the middle finally stated, it's voice definitively masculine and smooth. Neither of us said anything and the grove that we were in was completely silent, not even the wind was moving. I found that rather odd. Normally the fae brought with them rather unnaturally good weather and fake cheer.

At least, the summer fae did. The only time you ever had an atmosphere like this was when…

Fighting the urge to glance at Kurama, I cussed in my head, realizing that I couldn't talk to him telepathically without my jagan unless I felt like having everyone listen in, which I most certainly didn't want. Whatever this was though, the summer and winter fae cooperated long enough to make it happen.

"Follow me." The noble finally said. Clenching my jaw, I decided not to tell him what he could shove up his ass before walking off. If Angela dropped dead, I was going to have a problem.

I stubbornly refused to acknowledge how much I wanted her out of their clutches and chattering next to me.

Growling slightly under my breath, I followed Kurama who was already a ways ahead.

Something was just so fishy about the whole situation, I just didn't know what.

—

I didn't expect to be found quite so quickly after getting out and then so easily subdued. When I woke, I didn't awaken to any kind of terrible headache or other bad thing. If anything I was more well-rested and less achy then I had been in months.

I wasn't dressed in my t-shirt and shorts anymore.

Instead I was clothed in some sort of dress, my hair rather done up and I knew that my skin was kind of glowing in some artificial way. The dress though…

I stared at it for me then a minute or two, amazed. It appeared to be made out of water or something, highlights undulating and a fake sense of depth covering the important parts. It was kind of like looking into water that was a few-hundred feet deep. You could see the light penetrating the surface, but nothing underneath. My thighs were kind of exposed and the swells of my breasts as well.

I wouldn't have called it _tastefully_ attractive, if you know what I mean.

I felt like some kind of whore, going out to parade her body about, but damn if I didn't look fantastic though. I mean, I wasn't ugly. I was rather thin and in shape, I had a good-sized chest and a nice face. I wouldn't have called myself dashing, but at least attractive.

Now, the question was, why was I all dolled up anyway?

It didn't long for my answer to appear in the form of what I was certain were my jailers. They came through the door to my bright, golden room, pretty as you please and the one in the front (who I was debating the gender of) hauled me to my feet and with something that I might have even called a bit gentle, pushed me toward the door.

Not knowing what else to do, I sucked it up and did so. I could still feel my sword and had the feeling that I would be seeing Hiei soon after, so I did as I was told.

"Lovely day, hmm?" I said pleasantly, as if they weren't marching me to someplace that probably held something terrible in store for me and they hadn't imprisoned me in a damp cell for three weeks in the dark half dead. No, it was a pleasant walk in the sun.

It was quite sunny, but not very warm, and there was no breeze. We had emerged from a tent (what happened to being in the castle?) and I was being marched through some sort of pavilion that it was in front of a rather large, foreboding stone castle.

I snorted, leave it to Hiei to be as cliche as possible.

"What, no answer?" I prodded, but my guards studiously ignored me, so I took to glancing around instead. We were in a camp filled with inhumanly beautiful humanoid things and I realized who I had been caught by with a distressed shiver.

I had been captured by the fae.

Why couldn't I ever get a good break?

—

"Welcome Kurama. Hiei." The imperial voice murmured, and one that was very similar, if not slightly lower and more dangerous repeated.

Stopping, I let my senses sweep the room, picking up on escape routes and the number of guards, the colors, the decoration. It was hard saying what could be important, so I just picked up on most of it. The most important feature of the gold and silver pavilion though, would be the two women sitting at the head of it.

They looked rather like humans in that they were a conventional size, and had normal voices and the feature-layout was correct, but that was where the similarities ended. They were freakishly and inhumanly beautiful. On the left, the woman sitting seemed more of a teenager, perhaps in her early-twenties, with loose curls in her pale to dark pink gradient hair. Modest curves, and long legs. Her skin was kissed with sunlight and warmth and her eyes glowed with an almost violently bright green. Long, pointed ears and tilted almond eyes, she radiated some form of cheer and home, but yet still seemed intimidating.

The other was almost the exact opposite. Looking like she was in her later twenties, this woman was taller and didn't have any kind of baby fat. Her curves were well-pronounced and she smiled with a dangerous tilt of lips that looked like chilled raspberries, skin obscenely pale like a glacier and long, straight white hair with seemingly subtle blue highlights that was pulled up and out of her face in a seemingly businesslike fashion.

They exuded power, which was to be expected, seeing as they were the —

"Ladies of winter and summer. It is an honor." I said, tilting my downward respectfully. Hiei didn't even do that, he didn't do anything but glare even more harshly. I almost berated him for being an idiot, but the action didn't seem to phase the two that were holding his mate's life in the balance. In fact, if I took their smirks and tilted eyebrows as an indication, they found it humorous.

"I don't do pleasantries." The fire demon spat. The two didn't react. They were very difficult to read. "Where is my mate?" Hiei broke into a snarl on the last word and even I gave him a surprised blink.

He never called Angela that, but looking at the archaic and ancient beings in front of us, I understood that it was the only phrase he could apply to make his question seem threatening.

Demons die quickly and often very painfully, if you are lucky enough to get a mate and even bond with them then you will be almost overwhelmed by the need to protect them. If I thought about it like that, his actions were actually admirably controlled to that point.

Still.

There were a few beats of silence where everyone held their breaths.

"Of course." The summer lady finally replied.

"Bring out the girl." Winter added.

I sighed. That had been too close for comfort.

I wasn't dumb. Looking across the courtyard at the large pavilion tent that was our destination, I did my best to square my shoulders and hold onto as much pride as possible that I could have in such a revealing piece of clothing.

The fae dotting the courtyard watched me as I were some sort of exotic animal as I was paraded past them. A particularly ugly one at that. Knowing that I was being underestimated irked me for some reason and so I took some of my rather large stores of magic energy and began to embellish my appearance some. I took the dress and reworked it a bit to seemingly glow a bit from within and glisten against my skin like real water, as if it really was just sliding from my hair or something.

I darkened my hair a bit because I liked how a really dark brown contrasted with blue and paled my skin some, then shook off those ideas because they changed my appearance _too_ much. Instead, I chose to add more breast support, bump it up a bit and some trickling jewelry for effect. I chose not to touch my face, knowing that Hiei, surprisingly enough, really hated make-up, claiming that it was unnatural, and really, perhaps I just didn't want him to think I was ugly.

I took one long, lingering look at my arm before turning toward the flaps of the tent and taking a deep breath.

"Well, let's get this over with." I stated, then, pushing open the flap with one hand, I marched forward. My guards seemed fairly flabbergasted, but to say that I actually cared about their opinions would be a horrible lie, and I was not a liar.

When I say marched, it wasn't really quite that bad. I did glance at the situation before just stomping in like an idiot. I was not Yuusuke.

"Well, good afternoon." I said, surveying the four important people in the room and smattering of guards. "I see that you all started the party without me." The hurt tone was a lie of course, but it never hurts to butter things up. Well, it wasn't really necessary in my case. I may as well have said: 'My name is Stormageddon. Dark Lord of All.' instead of what I actually did for the looks I got.

The two women, models, gods, ladies, at the front of the room just seemed to look up with a pleased smile that said 'oh there you are, we've been expecting you'. The other two faces in the room didn't look quite like that. It was more of a 'what the fuck, what the fuck?!' expression.

They couldn't have just been happy to see me, could they? Kurama unfroze first, blinking and then resettling into a more blank face. Hiei. Well. I was really happy to see him. I think that it worked in the other direction, too.

He just stared at me, like he was waiting for my figure to pop out of existence. Walking forward, I felt more and more at ease as the cold that had been wrapped around my limbs eased and became warm again. A spot in my chest flushed, a pinpoint of heat beneath my breast-bone, and it just made me want to melt into the floor with a dorky smile on my face.

I liked being warm because I had terrible circulation and was always cold, and it also made me feel like I wasn't alone. It was… nice.

Looking down, I realized that what I was feeling was Hiei reconnecting with me after being apart for such a long time. I suddenly felt very embarrassed that I had to be in public looking the way that I did. I just wanted to cover up, because I didn't want everyone to see me like that. It felt horrible. I felt violated for whatever reason.

The feeling broke when I felt the last few pieces clicked into place though. That connection reconnected almost violently, and I felt that overlay of him settle over me comfortably. It felt odd when he flexed his right arm, because I could feel it, it felt like my own. It was… kind of comforting.

I don't know, this all sounds really backwards, but no one else even knew that I was kind of panicking about how much stronger our bond had become since we'd last seen each other. It was almost complete. In fact, that automatic half of it already was.

"Okay. I don't remember committing a murder, so quit looking at me like that." I finally said, feeling uncomfortable under the weight of all the stares. Seriously, there had to be at least twenty humanoid things in that room just staring me down. All of them were prettier then me, men included. Well, except for Hiei. He was pretty manly.

"Angela." Kurama finally said in greeting. I nodded politely at him, and almost gave an expectant look to Hiei, but he abruptly snapped his head away and stared straight forward. Well that was odd, what was up with that?

"Ah, dragon-bearer." One of the ladies finally said.

I looked up. "No, not anymore Lady." I finally answered, turning all the way forward. Their eyes widened at that, and I fought the urge to stare at my own stump too. Suddenly, I realized what I had just said and my heart sank with fear.

'Angela.' Oh, now he chooses to speak. Swallowing hard, I kept my eyes forward, waiting for the freaking out that I was certain would come momentarily.

Clearing my throat, I sat carefully in one of the seats placed across from the ladies. Water tinkled in the background and it was rather silent.

'Yes, Hiei?' I asked, sounding much more certain then I felt. He didn't continue, knowing that I already knew what he was asking, but I kept up my innocence routine, waiting for him. He narrowed his eyes at me, his glare irritated and… betrayed? Reaching up, I began twirling a piece of hair. I somehow didn't imagine that everything would be quite so calm, but I also didn't expect to meet old acquaintances who would bring up the last thing that I had ever wanted Hiei to know.

'Yes, I used to be the container for a dragon.' I finally murmured bluntly. He tried to answer, but then winter lady spoke, and I had to focus.

"Angela. You seem to have ended up with a nice group." She said, almost kindly. The other two looked confused, I shrank back into my seat. "It's too bad that you have a death warrant on your head, isn't it?" She said, grinning even though she was literally threatening to kill me. I didn't say anything at all. Luckily, I didn't have to.

"Don't touch my mate, bitch." Hiei hissed from two feet to my left. And the room just seemed to descend into the most surreal chaos.

—

I had never, ever planned on telling about my past relationships. Whether it was because I felt like it wasn't his business, or I was just too embarrassed to talk about it, or perhaps too mortified, they never came up. Well, it was only one and, frankly, it wasn't a relationship. Not from my point of view. Not anymore.

A relationship was supposed to be give and take. You gave someone a part of yourself and they gave a part of themselves back. You supported them, and they supported you. You kind of became a part of each other, in your own odd way. Well, I suppose a perfect relationship would be like that. Mine wasn't then, and it hadn't been before either, but what I had had was a bastardization of the word love, because, honestly, I thought that I had been in love.

I was wrong.

'His name was Demetri.' I said, and even though Hiei was still visibly bristling in his seat and had also called me something that made my heart feel like it was actually coming out of my chest, I still felt like I owed him an explanation. 'I met him at a party, a long time ago, back when I still… still knew my parents.' I added. He seemed to go very quiet.

We were both lucky that Kurama was present, because he could apologize for us (the look in their eyes when Hiei got mad was freaking me out) and he was also better at peace talks. It kind of appeared like he was stalling for time, but I couldn't really pay attention. I was busy talking about one of my worst memories.

'I don't — know what he was doing there, but he was there. He was obviously not human, too tall, too perfect, too attractive, and that's exactly why I spoke to him.' I said. Hiei seemed to be watching Kurama and the ladies argue back in forth with words that were too big for me to get dully, but I knew that he was listening. 'I had finished my training to get my wizard license only a month or so before, and was back home, thinking about all the new stuff I had learned. He was of the fae, of course. And mentioned Demon World, something I had heard about, and then told me about how it was so dangerous and the treasure I would find there and — I don't know how he knew what to say.'

I had to break off, because I was beginning to get lost in my memories.

'I started becoming obsessed with getting there, and he stayed for awhile, making me that much more obsessed. I kind of, started to fall for his charm, his looks, what he told me he would do if I were to come with him.' I knew that he didn't understand where I was going with this, but I did. 'Then he disappeared, saying that he had to go back. I followed him, of course. And it was my mistake.'

'You're not allowed to go to Demon World as a human without a pass. I knew that, and when I asked, they turned me down, saying that I wasn't strong enough.' A humorless chuckle escaped my mouth. 'I have an issue with pride, and besides, I didn't think that anything should get in the way of love. I was incredibly naive, and stupid if I thought that I was any match for a demon. I was in military school at the time, and in a class that taught us how to use swords. It took me a few months, but eventually I finally managed to go through the process of getting a full-bonded sword. Of course, I thought I was invincible then. He came back, and took me with him, saying that I was ready.'

Then my face went completely blank as I remembered the biggest regret of my life.

'My parents didn't agree, so I erased myself from their memories. I erased all of the parts of myself that existed in Human World. My friends, memories, letters, pictures.' I paused. 'He said he loved me, how could I not?'

—

It was so hard to explain the coming of my dragon. I did in fact know of Hiei's own dragon entity living inside of him. I'd heard the stories and seen the tattoo that spiraled down his muscles. Well, they were more like burns actually, as if someone (or something) had literally branded him with the mark.

From what I'd heard about it, the thing was violent and hurt Hiei. Mine hadn't hurt me. I would have given anything to get it back, too.

"You must call off the Demon Tournament." That made me listen. Kurama was trying to make the fae leave without bloodshed. There had been plenty of fighting, plenty of heartache, we didn't need more of it. I was tired of getting hurt, and almost in answer to that thought my back twinged.

Both Hiei and I focused in on what was being said with near surprise. Well, I did. He was better at multitasking then I was.

"Why would we do that? Implying that we even have the power to do so." I pointed out in shock. Painfully green eyes turned to me and I fought the urge to squirm in my seat. The Summer Lady was deceptively kind. She might kill you as much as save you, suffocate you as much as put a blanket over you, it was hard to tell with her. The Winter Lady was much less bipolar, and far closer to being simply bad-tempered. She was beautiful, but vicious, but at least with her you could at least guess what to expect. Kind of.

She freaked me out a lot less, anyway, though that might stem from the fact that I was a lot more involved with her then I was with the Winter Lady. Her name was Nightingale. She changed it about every millennia or so to shake things up or something like that. There was nothing worse then a bored faerie queen, their favorite way to kill time was just that, actually kill things. But not the normal way, they weren't serial killers or something, no it was much worse then that.

I don't even want to describe it.

"That is my agreement for your freedom and my leave." She said, eyes glinting. I didn't like that look. "It is your choice." Her archaic flair left a bad taste in my mouth.

I just wanted to take Shakespeare and suffocate her with it.

"And if I said no?" Kurama asked, the hidden threat of violence running beneath his polite smile.

She just smiled back. The Winter Lady, Mauve, didn't say anything at all. She seemed to think this all rather dull. Well, I couldn't blame her. It was pretty boring. It was almost like they knew what we were going to say though. Shrugging, I figured that it was because they had done things like this more then a few times.

"I could just call the council to remove you, what makes you so certain that I won't do so?" He asked. The Lady's eyes drifted to me, and he glanced beside him. Hiei bristled again, knowing that she meant that they might kill me if they got involved. Why would they do that, though?

"Would they choose violence over peace through her death?" She asked. My face froze.

"As if I would let them, bitch." Hiei said, snorting with derision. I felt my eyes go wide and a shiver crept up my spine. It wasn't unpleasant, mind you, just…

"I could crush you if I so chose, mortal. It would be best to keep control of that tongue." She said. My eyebrows furrowed. That had been almost… impatient. That was odd. The fae were immortal, why was she in such a hurry?

Why was it that I never got to finish my stories without being cut off? Bad memories drifting through my head, I shivered and decided that I would rather avoid finishing it. Hiei sent me a pointed look and I realized that I wouldn't be getting off quite that easily. A price on your head from the fae wasn't an easy feat to do, and pulling the blinds ever their eyes wasn't easy either.

I was unrealizingly more of a part of the problem then I had imagined that I would be.

"If you kill me, what does that get you?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "You didn't come here just to kill me, Nightingale, I think we both know that." The Winter Lady seemed to perk up and I had successfully narrowed the conversation to me and the Summer Lady.

"Perceptive." She commented. She had planned for me to figure it out. Darn, I had so been hoping to get her on that one. "If I kill you, tiny mortal, then I kill your dear mate." My jaw clenched. "So I suppose that I get what I want then, don't I?"

I froze, how did she know that we were soul-bonded? She would have done this on purpose, and when I thought about it, how did they know kidnapping me would lure Hiei and Kurama. It just didn't add up.

My eyes widened. There would had to have been a spy in Genkai's house, but none of the people there would ever be two-faced, except for perhaps… I blanched.

'Hiei, we need to leave. This is a ruse!' I yelped in my head, seeing the smirk spreading on Mauve's face. He seemed rather startled when I yelled, and I would have been proud of myself for causing the expression was it at any other time.

'We can't.' He ground out, leveling his eyes with women staring us down. I couldn't help but wonder how she didn't flinch. Hiei had eyes that were almost too bright of a red, as if they glowed from the inside. I wrote it off as something demon-related, but that didn't make them any less terrifying.

Then I stood. They wanted me. Fine.

"If you weren't going to give us a choice, then don't pretend as if you are." I said, almost snarling. Not only had bad memories been brought up, but then she had to remind me that my arm didn't exist anymore. Wherever my dragon was, I didn't know. It didn't exist inside of my head anymore, I was certain of that. A different dragon had replaced it.

"Angel-" Kurama began, but his voice cut out from my ears as an icy hand gripped my neck and dragged me backwards through the air almost impossibly fast.

"Angela!" Hiei yelled, jumping to his feet, hand hovering over his sword. Kurama stopped him and we all stood perfectly still. Well, everyone except for me. I was too busy gagging and struggling for breath from where I was suspended in the air. My magic that I had been using to fix various parts of me abruptly cut off, and I screamed in pain as my back popped and cracked without my magic helping it work correctly.

The hand shook me and I bit back another cry, the taste of iron coating my tongue.

"Every time you move, she does as well." Nightingale said calmly. I hung still, trying to keep from making the vertebrae stretch and move.

I could almost feel Hiei's anger buzzing in my head saying 'mine, mine, mine, mine, mine' over and over again, almost obsessively. I would have been pissed, if it wasn't his way of being worried. I wasn't a weakling, I wouldn't die from this; but I also didn't need any more injuries. I was enough of a burden as it was.

The other two returned slowly to their seats, even though the tension in Hiei only grew. I shivered remembering that he had called me his mate. That was… That was a big step. It showed utmost respect and trust in me. It was basically the Demon form of asking someone to marry you, it was… a big deal. I didn't know how it worked though, but I had my guesses and wondered what about me would change if that really were to happen.

It was totally innapropriate for me to be distracted by thoughts of mating rituals when I was basically hanging like a stuck pig seven feet in the air, but at the same time, I was trying to distract myself. Breathing and moving were anguish, so I thought instead. That wasn't quite so bad, anyway. My ears were ringing and my vision was beginning to tunnel.

I was the most useless thing ever, and it angered me to no end. I didn't want to hold everyone back and destroy Hiei and — could he feel this? I didn't even notice that I was descending through the air until my feet touched the ground and it took every drop of my willpower to stay standing when the pressure hit my back.

I took a heavenly gasp of air and my bruised chest ached when expanded, but in the best way. I didn't understand why I had been let down until I looked up and saw the council standing at the other end of the pavilion. My heart stuttered.

How did I get myself into these things?

—

Eventually I did get used to the darkness. I must have spent weeks in it. I also perfected the art of lying around staring at nothing again. I had been hoping never to have to do that again, but on the bright side, at least my surroundings weren't white. I'd had enough white to last a lifetime. It was bright and liked light, but it was painfully bright and only reminded me about how much of a nightmare my real life was as well as my dreams.

This time I got used to the dark. Eventually, it wasn't as much of a terror as a comfort. The dark was warm and like a heavy blanket, I felt like I was hiding behind it. I could construct various things to make myself more comfortable as well, I soon learned.

Only things, not people or constructs. I still dreamt as well, at times. I was met by lots of things and people, coming in and out of my unconscious mind at random. They were things that I might have seen at one point in my life, and people that just passed by my peripheral vision. It was kind of hard to tell, but none of them were all that important to me.

I had to keep on telling myself that I would make it through this, but I could feel it, every day my body inched further away from me. At first, I could feel what was happening kind of, I was sort of present for things. Like a ghost of sorts. Images would pass through the darkness, showing me what was happening, what was being planned.

These constructs terrified me. They were filled with death and plans for the death of the people that mattered the most to me. I couldn't get out though. I couldn't help, I couldn't do anything, and soon I began to forget that I had once had a body. I started filling my world with buildings and constructs to fill up my time, and what my world actually once became fuzzy.

At some point I became so far gone that I began to believe that this was my place. It was filled with people and life and things worked like they should and I was going to school. It was odd because I only every seemed to be learning about math and art, but that was okay I just kind of overlooked that.

Then this place shattered into pieces. It had been months, I was certain. I had a calendar and had been keeping track of the days that passed. Every day, I would go home to my house where I was alone. All of the lights would dim and wink out, and I would be left as the only light in a sea of buildings that seemed to be kind of familiar.

Everything disappeared one day when I heard a voice that was echoing over everything. I looked up to the night sky, confused. Voices didn't come out of the sky. They just didn't. That's not how the world worked. Squinting up into the darkness, I couldn't see anything and eventually, I just shook my head and returned to my room. There were a lot of plants in it that I had entered on a whim.

I wanted them to be there, even though I didn't really know why.

The voice echoed again, louder, clearer, and I froze. My head began to pound as if there was something that I was supposed to be remembering, but wasn't for some reason that I didn't understand. Gasping in pain, I dropped to the wood floor, knees crashing and then crying in pain.

I didn't understand what was happening. I hadn't done anything wrong. I was trying to understand the words being spoken, but they were just too far away. I couldn't understand.

"Stop!" I screamed, pressing my face against the floor in agony. Abruptly the clamoring noise, the light, the dirt digging into my forehead, all of it ceased to exist. Gasping, I slowly let go of my head and pushed off of the ground, cracking open my eyes.

My eyes rested on one woman standing in front of me with a soft smile, golden hair pulled back into a comfortable ponytail. My eyes widened exponentially as I stared at her and then suddenly everything flooded back to me. Almost dying, wishing for things in an antiseptic smelling hospital room, making a deal with some entity to save the two most important people in my life, not giving it my body when it tried to take over, suffering under it's torture and then-

"Mom." I murmured, my voice getting thick with emotion. She smiled softly at me. I just stared like a deer in the headlights, coming slowly to my feet.

"Evaline, you look so much bigger." She said, her eyes sad. My lips shook, and I swallowed hard to clear the lump in my throat.

"Is it…"

"It's me." She said, and I just stared into her pale blue eyes, so much less startling on her warm face. A shiver ran over my shoulders and I ran forward with a cry, wrapping myself around her taller form and squeezing as tightly as I could. She was warm, and smelled nice, like she always had. Cornflowers and soap and cinnamon.

Finally getting a hold of myself, I stepped back and just looked at her.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered. Her smile turned sad and she sighed.

"I had to wake you up." She answered. I shuddered again. "I had to warn you. You need to know… Lasciel didn't pick you on accident, honey." She continued, and my head jerked up in shock.

"What?"

—

Wavering, the council and I just stared at one another. I specifically went wide-eyed at the one in the lead.

"Oh good, more idiots." Hiei commented, looking even more on edge if that was possible. I fought back the urge to scream. I couldn't handle more then I already was and here was another burden to be dropped onto my shoulders. I had powerful shoulders, but even I could only handle so much.

A harsh gaze passed over me, but settled on something over my shoulder. Glancing behind, I realized that Nightingale was just watching what was going on with no expression at all. If I thought that leaders of the faerie realm could be exhausted, then that's what I would have named her expression. It was an odd feeling.

My knees began to quake. I couldn't stay up much longer. My back was screeching with agony and I simply didn't have the energy. I silently cursed my luck. I had just wanted to be able to help of my own accord, but everything was over my head. I just didn't understand the scope of the problem, whatever it was that we were dealing with.

Hiei had kept me in the dark. It was obviously a big deal if they called the council, and I had no idea. My jaw clenched and when Hiei's eyes suddenly widened I knew that he'd caught onto how furious I was. Furious and disappointed. I didn't know why they didn't tell me, but I had a guess.

My shoulder clenched and I reached up with a wince to rub it. The muscle liked to spasm a rather large amount and sometimes really hurt, but it was my punishment. It was my continuous reminder of my mistakes. It was my constant note of failure. It was exactly what told me that nobody here trusted me.

I could claim my innocence, but nobody would ever believe what I was saying.

I didn't move even as everyone began to speak, and then the fae seemed to give in and still, I just stared blankly forward. I had moved to the side though, staying out of everything. I could feel eyes on me though, eyes that judged, eyes filled with distrust. Raising my chin, I brushed them off. Fine, they could hate me all they wanted. I didn't need those people anyway.

It was just such a stark reminder that I was here because of my irreversible connection with Hiei and no other reason. The screaming in the silence, those were my feelings. I was brimming with uncertainty, standing on the precipice of decision and actions that could change my life forever, with no real control. About to fall.

My eyes drifted to the short, irritable fire demon of their own accord and it felt like I was falling into a chasm. I was not the right person for him. Hiei was powerful, kind of blood-thirsty, secretly pretty nice at times, and very loyal to the people that mattered to him.

I was tall, short-tempered, prideful and regretted most of the decisions I had ever made. If opposites attract, then we were so similar we repelled or something like that. I wasn't the peanut-butter to his cracker, I was hot sauce getting dumped all over a plate of sashimi, and that would never taste good. He couldn't stand humans, especially not me, and didn't understand most of our customs. My only talent was pissing him off on a daily basis.

It's just — a warmth suddenly spread over my skin, making my shoulders relax and the pain in my back and head break up. I sighed in relief and then blinked, recognizing that heat. Sliding to finally sit down, I ran a hand through my hair and yawned.

It only took a few minutes to correctly replace my spells and get myself looking right. Carefully checking my surroundings, I realized that most of it was made of carefully woven illusions. I began to pick at the one that was constructing my dress, but as I was finally figuring out how to get it to unravel, I realized that it wasn't using my clothes as a base.

I just wasn't wearing anything else. Eyes widening and ears turning slightly red, I immediately reset the magic and didn't touch it.

I just wasn't wearing anything else. Eyes widening and ears turning slightly red, I immediately reset the magic and didn't touch it.

Looking up and nearly laughing at myself, I just kind of watched the goings-on. The brown-haired leader of the council seemed to be in quite a heated debate with Kurama and the two lady's. The guards looked very on edge, but weren't doing anything because of the influx of powerful wizards in the room.

"His name is Koenma. I would have thought that you'd know that." A voice sneered. Looking up, I felt really exhausted rather then excited at the sight of Hiei and wanted to slap myself across the face. What had happened to all of my passion a few hours before that?

"I don't get along well with royalty." I commented. I had in fact known the name of the head of the council, but he and I had a terrible past going, so I attempted to ignore him and his existence.

"I couldn't tell." He muttered, snorting. I shook my head, but then couldn't help wondering, why was Hiei even over by me anyway? Glancing around his form, I realized that the two arguing parties had come to an agreement of some sort. My stomach began to feel fluttery.

I knew that Koenma didn't trust me. I mean, technically my even being here was violating my probation rules that kept my head safely on my shoulders. Well, kind of safely anyway.

Face screwing up, I began to wonder why the creature across the pavilion was backing down so easily. She held the power here, and had set this up on purpose, for whatever nefarious reasons brewed about in her alien cranium. This was a trap, right? Why had I thought that, anyway?

The shiny gold details of my surroundings began to blur into tinkling water and bright light, becoming one swirling mass of faerie-generated finery.

"Angela?" A growling voice questions. I fought through the haze of confusion and giddiness, trying to make my mouth work. Fiery hands closed over my shoulders, and I went limp, head snapping backwards and lolling painfully.

"Somethings… wrong." I finally bit out, feeling like all of my strength was getting drained. I felt like I was slowly getting smaller.

"What is?" The voice pressed, and I groaned, trying to remember.

"I - I can't - Ngh!"

A whimper escaped my throat as a sharp barb of energy dug into my head. Loosening up the barriers, I let it in, recognizing the energy signature.

My head cleared, Hiei holding off the brunt of whatever spell was effecting me. My thoughts restarted with a violent cacophony of pictures and memories. The end to my story.


	2. We're Not Here Long

I slipped through the opening in the floor, feet sliding against the wet, slimy rock. Fractured, unworldly light bounced across the walls, making it difficult to tell where everything was.

Squinting in the gloom, I finally began to pick up on where the tunnel limits reached. The passage above me closed with an ominous creak and suddenly it was silent and I was very much alone.

Swallowing hard, I crept forward. This was for him, that was the thought I held on to in order to find the courage to keep walking. Noises were echoing and not all of them sounded like water. Skittering, chattering, the startling sounds of living creatures, hidden in the darkness.

Goosebumps were raised over my skin, and I chafed one hand up my arm, trying to get some warmth. I didn't touch my magic, that would be a one way trip to death. The thing that I was looking for was somewhere at the end of this passageway, and I needed all the strength that I could get.

Something brushed against my foot and I sucked in a breath of air, holding it until I no longer felt like screaming bloody murder. Letting it out in one huff, I took shaky breaths, inching forward again.

It would be a long haul if I couldn't speed up some. Cracking my knuckles, I took a deep breath and slapped my face lightly.

"Man up. You got this." I muttered to myself, and tightened my bun secured by five enchanted ponytails. What? I did not want my hair coming undone at an inopportune moment, that would just be really bad. The thought of what I had to fight popped into my head again and I shivered, sweat beading on my hands and neck.

It wasn't very warm in the tunnel. In fact it was chilly and unpleasantly damp. The squish-squish of my footsteps echoed and I could hear water lapping in the closer I got, the more my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

That's when the growl reached my ears.

I froze, going completely still. Well, if that wasn't a terrifying noise, then I didn't what was. Seconds passed and then turned into minutes before I was willing to keep moving. My heart was going a mile a minute, and no amount of deep breathing was slowing it down.

Gritting my teeth, I moved faster. The sword at my hip also helped give me enough push to keep going. I had a weapon, one that I was really good at using to. I had spent hours and weeks and months practicing, I knew what I was doing.

Besides, Demetri would never send me to do anything more dangerous then I was capable of… right?

That growl echoed again and even though my stomach had practically dropped into my feet at that point, I still used the sound to find where I should be heading towards and moved faster. I couldn't afford o take too long. I didn't have the luxury of that much time.

That fact that I had even gotten down here was a miracle, I couldn't push it. Picturing Demetri's red eyes, I readied my sword. It couldn't be that far away now, and I would only have a short window for executing my plan. If I failed, I didn't know what would happen. It just didn't click that I could die and nobody would come save me.

Finally, the sharp bend in the tunnel arrived and I took a deep breath, readying myself. Sliding my sword out into my right hand, I loaded up my left with iron dust. It didn't hurt me, but it was a very effective weapon against anything faerie.

Sucking in one deep breath, I slipped around the corner and yelled-

"Hey, monster, want some fresh meat?! Come get it!" I was staring into a huge expanse of oddly illuminated water that seemed rather calm all things considered, and my breath caught in my throat. What if it didn't work? I would fail Demetri!

My worries were for naught though, because the peace and quiet was shattered seconds later as a huge form exploded out of the water, towering upwards into the shadowy, non-distinct ceiling and sending a wave of liquid toward me. Leaping upwards, I did an acrobatic flip to the wall, stabbing my sword into a a crack and bracing myself for the water that drenched me from head to toe. The cold iron burned in my hand, but didn't get washed away and I didn't have to wait long for the head of the monster to begin flying toward my face.

Panicking, my feet began to slide and I yanked out my sword, rolling to a kneeling position and snapping upward, dust at the ready. The head finally came out of the gloom and the shattered light of the water made it look absolutely monstrous. Some sort of huge thing wish giant gnashing teeth and glowing eyes. I couldn't see clearly, I couldn't think clearly and I almost forgot what I held as the teeth that were a least the length of my forearm began closing in on me.

"Not today, bitch!" I yelled, and then threw the dust, aiming it for the eyes. It landed and the demon-creation roared, vibrating my bones and the entire room. It didn't sound pained though, and I stared, realizing that I hadn't hurt it, I had only pissed it off. "What?! Why aren't you hurt?! That was supposed to blind you!" I cried, and the cold grip of fear closed over my heart.

Slipping and sliding against the floor, I tried to run, but only got about twenty feet before a tail snaked out and grabbed my feet, mercilessly yanking my to the floor and my face smacked the rock _hard_ before I went flying into the air, cartwheeling toward vaulted cavern's top, where I could only pray that I wouldn't get impaled on a stalactite.

"Illuminati!" I said, and filled up the entire room with almost blinding light. It had lived in a dark cave for such a long time, that I figured I couldn't probably blind it that way. I wasn't wrong.

This time the roar was pained and I could clearly see the head that I was falling towards. It had probably been intending on simply swallowing me right out of the air, but had snapped its huge jaws shut when the lights came on.

I saw it all clearly in those milliseconds of falling. The coils that wrapped around and around, the long neck, the shimmering sapphire scales, the third eye sitting frozen on the top of its head. Screaming, I used all of my momentum and the strength of gravity to drive my sword into that one weakness, blood spurting from the wound as we both fell through the air. I held on tight just it time for us to drop like rocks into the water.

It filled my lungs as I automatically gasped and gurgled, struggling to get out, but my vision was going hazy and my body was going limp. With the last of my strength, I reached and pulled out my sword and oddly enough, I was crying.

I don't know when it had started, but I was weeping.

Not just out of fear and shock, but actual sadness. This creature had never done anything to me. I had come into its cave and forced it to fight me — and I had ended its life.

I threw the sword away and in that moment, tried to fix what I had done. Why had I been sent down here? This thing wasn't some sort of terrifying fae monster, it was a creature that had found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was no overgrown kelpi.

My hands went still and then I started drifting. I couldn't breathe, I was dying, my lungs were crying and I couldn't feel anything. It seemed so clear to me, in those seemingly final moments, that I was going to die because Demetri had meant for me to die.

He had known about this. I wanted to reject the idea, but I wasn't stupid. You don't overlook something this big, or this sacred. Dragons were rare, even in Demon World, even in the Faerie Realm, there were only a few. They weren't naturally violent, they didn't go looking for trouble. They were well-known to be good omens and very powerful allies.

It wasn't just that it was a dragon though. It was that someone who claimed to have loved me sent me to kill a living creature. I wanted to throw up and scrub all of my skin off where iridescent blue blood was coating it.

I had been tricked, conned into something by someone who had lied so many I couldn't even comprehend the number. I could picture that smile spreading across his lips if I had come back victorious. 'Good job.' He would congratulate me, those inhuman red eyes shimmering and perfectly styled black hair sweeping over a perfect face. All teeth and lies. He would tell me how beautiful and perfect I was for helping him rid the land of the thing that had cursed his mother.

How much of that was a lie? Did he even have a mother?

Demetri was more powerful then I was. He could have killed it all by himself with near ease. But instead he sent me down with a plan that wouldn't work, and would fail, saying that I was ready. If I died, I'm sure that it would have served a purpose. If I had come back, I would have also served a purpose.

The fae thought of humans as mere tools, playthings to pass the time. How had I missed that?

As my mind went blank and I passed out, I thought that I had felt something touch my forehead and imagined that it was my mother, putting me to sleep for the last time. So many regrets, perhaps my death would be for the best.

—

I awoke with a cough and spurting water from my nose and mouth while lying in a puddle of soaked clothing. I was uncomfortable and exhausted, although I had managed to use less magic then I had imagined that I would. Attempting to heal a dragon had certainly exhausted me though, so I was left with little.

"Oh my God." I croaked, rising to my hands and knees and continuing to cough out water. My nostrils and throat were burning and my lungs were crying in pain.

'Human.' A feminine, powerful voice murmured. I tried to stop coughing long enough to look around, but couldn't very clearly.

"Who are y-" My voice broke off harshly and I decided not to talk again. That act had been intensely painful. Nothing else was said and so I slowly rose to my feet, squeezing my eyes shut. Luckily that had been a fresh water pool, or I would have been in a lot more pain. A sort of happy gurgle thing echoed _in my head_ and I yelped, almost slipping on the rocks. My head wasn't bleeding anymore, I didn't want that to change.

Why was I even alive though? Nobody was around, in fact, nothing was around. My eyebrows furrowed. That included the body of the dragon.

"You were definitely dead." I said, but some part of me hoped that I was wrong. It had looked up at me with such fear, as if I had betrayed it. Sitting, I decided that it would be in my best interests to meditate a bit and rebuild my strength before thinking about how I was going to get back out. If Demetri had planned for me to die, and I was fairly certain that he had, then I was going to have to think fast.

There was no way that he had done any of this without a purpose then. He'd had a reason in dragging me here, because if I had learned anything from being as close to him as I had been, then it was that Demetri didn't do anything without a purpose.

Closing my eyes tightly, I tried to ignore the spike of pain that I felt when thinking about someone I cared about stabbing me in the back. I wasn't that naive though. I had seen enough of the three worlds and lived long enough to know that it was common It still hurt though.

Finally, I managed to fall into deep meditation. I may have been thinking, but it was about nothing as much as it was about everything. I wasn't even aware of what had happened until it was over. I was in that state and swimming around in it. What I found there wasn't my inner soul like it usually was, but instead I found unending blue coils curled loosely around a large creature just kind of chilling out in the dark.

It was warm. I smiled, it was a very comfortable kind of warmth and in meditation I wasn't prone to freaking out like I did when I was awake. I smiled more.

"What _are _you?" I wondered aloud. The pile stirred and then from the top a large face surfaced and blinked at me owlishly. I stared back. My head heated up, and I reached to my forehead, touching the tender skin there. I had to jerk my hand away because that _hurt_ dammit, but now I knew what had touched it.

"You saved me." I supplied. Those huge blue eyes flickered with a blink and then continued to look at me imploringly. It was trying to make me realize something. I thought hard. "But _why_? I _killed_ you." Just saying that made my mouth taste acidic. My lips trembled with the memory.

The overgrown lizard settled its head down in front of me, dwarfing looking at me with eyes twice the size of head. It made a funny sound in the back of its throat and I realized that this had been the source of the burbling noise.

"You're inside of me." I supplied. It nodded. "You chose this." It nodded again. My throat was thick with emotion. It had chosen to save me with the life energy that it had left, fully knowing that it would be trapped inside of me.

The memories fast-forwarded. Zipping through me escaping the cave and running from the faerie-realm into Demon World, meeting a group of wizards that were willing to keep me safe, pretending that I had been born with the mark on my forehead, getting closer to the dragon living inside of me all the way to when I couldn't run any further —

"Angela." He said imploringly, bright eyes wide and honest. I shrank away, wondering where my companions were. "I've missed you." He said, and I wanted so much to believe him that I did. I just… I just gave in. I should have known better, but I didn't want to be alone anymore. He brushed his fingers across my forehead. A soft smile spread across his face. I had never seen him smile like that and believed that it had shown how much he had changed. "I knew that you could do it." Damn me, I believed him.

It had all been one big misunderstanding. I wouldn't have to run anymore!

It was too tempting, so I went with him. He said that my group had been notified, that they understood, and I just followed some blind, retarded sheep. I should have seen it coming — I didn't.

"This woman has betrayed us all!" He yelled across the square. I was pushed roughly forward by the two behind me and struggled to get away, they yanked my head back, exposing the tattoo imprinted onto my face. The crowd gasped. I bit my lip to keep from crying out when the men behind me pushed me roughly to the ground. "My own wife!" He continued, and when I stared up at him, terrified, he just grinned at me, all sharp teeth and inhuman actions. "She was the murderer of the sacred beast!"

The crowd roared and I collapsed. A death sentence. That was to be expected, after all I was the cause of the death of something they had been keeping for such a long time. I went against everything that Demetri had taught me, I went against Nightingale. I tried to tell them that I had been framed, but of course no one believed me against the word of their beloved Lady and Knight.

"Cute." I whispered. ('Don't you have a name?' I wondered, reaching forward. She cocked her head, looking much smaller then she actually was. 'You know, something for me to call you?' I wondered. She shook her head this time. 'Oh, well then I guess I have to name you.' I added aloud. The dragon seemed to agree and I smiled softly. 'Cute.' I commented. She burbled and twittered, my eyes widened. 'Wait, no! I was just-' It was too late, she had already decided that it was perfect.)

There was a glare drilling into the back of my skull, the disapproving look of thousands. One look at Nightingale and Demetri told me that this had been the plan from the beginning.

My head bowed and I wished that things could have changed. Real life isn't a fairytale though, and you have to face the music at some point.

My head bowed and I wished that things could have changed. Real life isn't a fairytale though, and you have to face the music at some point.

"Why are you giving me this?" I asked the man as he handed me my bonded sword. He looked out at the huge expanse of dark water. The lights glittering behind him shimmered and he simply pushed the boat I was in forward.

I didn't understand what I was in for and I was left with Demetri's dark smile from the shore as my only way of remembering him. My skin crawled. I fervently wished that I still had the company of Cute, but she had been sealed away and I couldn't interact with her. She was still there, and supplied me with extra magic at times, but I couldn't meditate and chat a little bit.

I had gotten used to her presence, it was disconcerting and saddening. I was glad that I had at least thrown a wrench into Demetri's plans though. He hadn't expected her to choose to help me and that meant that she couldn't be removed. They had tried to take her. They couldn't.

Wisps of fog rose from the dark water, highlighted by the meandering witch-light positioned at the front of the boat. I had been sent out there to die. Not in the Faerie-Realm of course. I no longer had the right to enter that place, but I also no longer had the desire to do so either, so it worked out.

The telltale slither was my only warning as somebody surfaced from the water.

"Human." It said. That was funny, it reminded me of how I had met Cute. The water rippled and I stared at the woman floating there. She was beautiful, if not rather unusual. Her hair was so black it almost seemed slightly blue or green, and her eyes were a bright sky blue. I saw the scales though, peeking at the corners of her eyes and the gills fluttering just behind ears that couldn't be human.

"Mermaid." I answered. It blinked.

"Sing for me?" It asked, tilting its head and leaning on the side of the boat. I nearly growled at it.

"Are you going to kill me?" The surprised look it had was awfully believable, but I had been tricked enough that I could recognize the lie. "I take that as a yes."

My feet flexed against the wooden floor of the boat. I didn't know very much about mermaids, other then some pictures way back when I was earning my wizard certificate and from the movie The Little Mermaid. Staring at the predator in front of me, I got the feeling that if I told her that I could give her legs, she probably wouldn't jump all over that idea.

No pun intended.

"So, how's the water?" I asked, stalling for time. What was I supposed to do? I had limited magic at my discretion and an entire lake of water for her to run around in. Hearing more pops from the water, I added the existence of more mermaids to that list of disadvantages.

Mermaids have a surprisingly good sense of humor. The thing in front of me hissed with some form of unearthly laughter and exposed the naked fangs within its mouth. They were green. As in, cooked spinach green. My eyes widened in surprise. The witch light glimmered off of them, there was a chorus of hissing from behind my back. Most people in that situation would cry, or panic, or just be really upset. I transcended all of that.

I was pissed.

"God, and you guys don't even know that you're getting used, do you?!" I ranted. The shock value of me ranting while in a veritable sea of enemies was the only thing that kept me alive, I think. I wasn't crazy, and I was obviously aware of my surroundings. I was literally talking to my killers about how stupid it was that I was even there. My fingers tapping against the hilt of my sword. I was trying to come up with a way to get out of this.

Nothing was coming to me.

"And you're all going to kill me. And then eat me. I'm still not sure how I feel about that." That terrifying green grin popped up again and I knew that my time was up. I had tried, but nothing was coming to me.

"Sing." The thing ordered. I happily complied.

"Do you guys know Justin Beiber?" I asked. What? It was the first thing that popped into my head! It stared me down and I could see that I had lost my charm. It was hungry and I was dinner. I went to my failsafe. "Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has everything? Look at this trove…"

Voice rasping kind of painfully, I winced, again wishing for the fiftieth time that I wasn't alone in this. I couldn't even see the bright lights of the party on the shore anymore.

"I stare at my reflection in the mirror." The key abruptly changed as I stared forlornly into the distance, humored smirk slipping off of my face. "Why am I doing this to myself?" The water lapped quietly against the edge of the boat and I rocked back and forth, thumb running along the edge of my sword. "Losing my mind on a tiny error."

My vision began to blur and a tear slipped down the edge of my cheek.

"Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing, it's okay not be okay." I closed my eyes. "Just be true to who you are." This time the silence was deafening. Hundreds of eyes reflected in the darkness, watching me.

I stood up and slid my sword from its sheath.

"Sometimes its hard to follow your heart." The words seemed a bit harsh as I moved forward, leaping from the boat and onto the top of the water, just a little bit of magic holding me afloat, witch-light causing the gleams of tails underwater and the glitter of black eyes to seem threatening.

"When you smile, that's my home." I sang, even at the waves rippled and one of the creatures broke out of its trance, speeding toward me. There was no back-up music, no warnings, just a terrible hissing and splashes from out in the darkness. The one by my boat was gone. I was having flashbacks. That wasn't good.

Seriously, I'd had to many near-death experiences in too little time. Fate _hated_ me. This wasn't even a near-death experience, this was an _almost-certain_ death experience. My voice broke and I finally went quiet. Barely a second passed before a long, slimy thing whipped out of the darkness for my head. Yelping with surprise, I whipped my sword through the air, slicing off the top.

It didn't stop though. Scrambling backwards, I tried to get out of range, heart drumming from the shot of adrenaline coursing through body. The thing slapped against my arm and wrapped around holding tight. With a yell, I sliced it in half, detaching it.

"Oh fuck _me_!" I yelled, seeing the seaweed now hanging loose. Why couldn't it be something I could actually defend against? Why was I so unlucky?

Because life sucks, that's why.

That hissing laughter echoed in the darkness and I sneered at the lurking danger.

"Oh, go fuck yourselves." My temper was growing shorter by the second, and I still didn't know how to fight them, so I decided to do the next best thing — I ran like hell. Leaping into the air, I tried to fly, but that was a really advanced spell that took too much energy. I sort of put more energy into my feet instead, trying to make my feet hitting the water give me more momentum and then just ran in the opposite direction of the shore. I didn't want to leap out of the frying pan and into the fire after all.

Mermaids, it turns out, are really fast.

Even with the extra push, I wasn't getting away quick enough. My lips pursed tightly, I spun around and spun my simple katana, lighting it on fire. Hey they were water demons, fire must be effective. Besides, I liked fire. Suddenly an idea popped into my mind that was absolutely genius. Looking at the fire, I watched it change from orange to a jumpier, scarier purple that crackled violently. Jumping upwards, I shoved the supercharged sword into the water and the entire thing lit up with explosions, the booming loud enough to be heard up where I was. After all, water was a great conductor of electricity.

The hissing turned into high-pitched screams and I didn't wait around to see if my attack had been effective, I turned around and hauled my ass out of there. After a few minutes, the other side of the lake finally came into view and my harsh breathing stuttered before picking up. A tiny smile cracked my lips as I pushed forward, so close. I was only maybe a hundred feet away, one more leap.

But as I vaulted into the air, something snaked out of the water, caught my foot and _yanked_. Squealing in pain, I crashed face first into the water and was quickly pulled under. Flailing, I reached for my magic, but found that my energy had been mostly drained from that last gigantic attack. There were hundreds of mermaids on my tail, only one, and it was burned badly and bleeding into the water.

At first, I wondered where I was getting a source of light from, but my sword was still in hand and I had subconsciously lit it up. It took next to no energy, but the second I could clearly see my opponent I began to fervently wish that I hadn't.

Mermaids are demons, and they weren't pretty. They had sickly looking skin and black eyes. As in, sclera, pupil, whites, the whole thing, it was one solid mass of black. They had no hair, instead, some sort of seaweed sprouted there and it made me gag. The huge fluttering gills and blackened ears and burning skin and slimy tail and fucking _spikes_ poking out everywhere also helped to contribute to my sudden, intense fear.

I screamed, struggling to get out of the tendrils choking me, but only bubbles and a lot of wasted energy was my result. Water was going to be something terrifying if I ever got out of that whole cluster-fudge, I decided. I would be lucky if I ever wanted to swim again. My sword dimmed and then flickered before going out and my struggles got weaker, limbs going still.

More bubbles drifted toward the surface of the water, the barest haze of moonlight peeking through the surface of the water. Beams of light fluctuating across my hands and the things face. I didn't feel at peace, I didn't appreciate the beauty of this, and I definitely didn't cry. This wasn't like the dragon. It had sought me out for the sole purpose of turning me into dinner, even after I told it my story and sang to it.

At first I thought that the bright light beginning to emanate from somewhere was a trick of the light, or perhaps I was about to die. Neither of my thoughts were right.

My forehead began to heat up and I realized that the glow was coming from my tattoo. The monster choking the life out of me hissed in pain as the light continued to get brighter and brighter, almost painfully so.

'Human.' If I was hallucinating, then it was a good hallucination. The word was followed by a little happy chirp. My forehead pulsed, but it felt far away, and I was so distracted by the act of inhaling water (again) and feeling my lungs giving in (again) that I just imagined that it was the prelude to me dying.

I had gotten lucky. I wouldn't get lucky twice. Only a hundred feet from the shore, and I was going to be killed by a creature that was already half-dead.

That was just… lame.

And add in the fact that I was, for all intents and purposes, being strangled by _hair_ made the whole situation so much worse. It was just, I felt like I hadn't done anything. I had been out for adventure and excitement and love and instead met pain and betrayal and death.

My eyes drifted shut and this time something didn't touch my forehead, but exploded out of it.

—

I knew that something was inexplicably wrong when I resurfaced into consciousness this time. For one, I wasn't dead. Again. I was really cultivating a talent for somehow escaping death even when I shouldn't be able to. Two, I was dry and even though my throat hurt, I was otherwise feeling pretty all right, if not a bit tired. Three, there was no longer a tattoo on my forehead and no longer any kind of thing inside of me anywhere.

I felt empty and cold and alone.

I was empty and cold, but not alone.

Cracking open my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath, yawning. My back kind of hurt, but I chalked it up to probably being deposited on the ground. My head was pounding, but Cute had worked through the tattoo that had once been there.

Warm light flickered, and I flexed my toes in the direction of the heat source, opening my eyes and glancing around. My sword wasn't on me, but it wasn't the biggest deal. I could summon it back with near ease. There were five or six people milling about and I watched for a few minutes, counting three guys and two girls before someone finally noticed that I was awake. One of the girls rushed over, yelling to her companions that I was up. The camp moved into a flurry of motion, all of which I watched with little to no interest.

I was alone, no dragon, no Demetri (not that I wanted to see him), no family, no home, I had nowhere to go and nobody knew that I existed except for the ones that wanted to kill me. It was a sobering thought.

"What's your name?" The girl asked. She was rather mousy, with dull brown hair and a button nose and very big, doe eyes. Her voice was also kind of squeaky, but if she was small, then the other girl was the exact opposite.

Probably almost six feet tall, she was muscular and blonde and exuded finesse. A healer and a fighter, then. The three men were of differing ages. One seemed on the younger side, and was lanky and thin, one seemed probably around nineteen and was tall and muscular, typical attractive leader. The last guy was the oldest, probably about twenty-two, and was a _tank_.

Instead of feeling like I was in the company of people like myself, I could only look and think 'typical headstrong teenagers high on power'. No excitement, no thoughts of joining them, I just felt dead. It was horrible. I didn't even want to cry. I just wanted to curl up in a corner and go to sleep, and perhaps never wake up again.

"Angela." I answered slowly, pushing up into a sitting position and rubbing the bridge of my nose. The tall guy seemed to be looking at me from the corner of his eye, the blonde girl was watching me like a hawk and the other two seemed to hold no specific interest. The mousey one smiled however and nodded.

"Oh, my name is Lily." She said cheerfully, her big eyes so innocent. I didn't understand how she could look so happy. "That's Cassidy." - The blonde chick. - "Harley." - The skinny kid. - "Zach." - Mr. High and Mighty. - "And Jake."

I could tell what all of their personalities were like just by how they reacted. Cassidy nodded, and Harley smiled and waved slightly, Zach just scoffed, but Jake continued looking calmly at me, as if trying to pick up on what I was thinking.

Ha, none of them would even be able to slightly comprehend what I had gone through in the weeks of the past. I warmed up to them over time though, they kind of became my family after I joined the group. They were searching for a particular powerful artifact. I had never heard of it, but it was supposed to give you a lot of power. That was something I understood. After retrieving my sword, I began to think a lot about what had happened, spending hours at a time submerged in my thoughts. I didn't sleep well and began to simply keep watch and meditate. I couldn't seem to close my eyes without that last image sitting in my head.

Cute driving out of me to attack the monster and throwing me out of the water, she gave me one last look and nodded. It was what she had wanted to do.

I hated the demon for it.

I didn't blame Cute. It had been her choice and her choice alone to save me, but I blamed the demon. I think I just wanted something to hate, but I didn't see it at the time. My hatred of mermaids began to extend toward every demon, the feeling building with every monster I fought — fought and killed. I was already so dead on the inside that it stopped bothering me. I wouldn't have claimed that I enjoyed killing, but I didn't hate it either. I was just kind of indifferent.

Jake, though. He was odd. He didn't say much, but I hadn't been wrong about him being a tank. They were all wizards, but he just had so much firepower. I mean, the others were good (except Lily, she healed pretty well though), but I could have probably beaten them was I so inspired to try. Jake on the other hand. I wasn't sure. We were probably about equal. He had more magical energy at his disposal, but I had more skill, he was stronger, but I was faster, we sort of complimented each other.

He became a sort of mentor to me. He was the one who realized that I was having nightmares and often kept me company at night. We didn't talk, we just sat there, and I often stared up at the sky, wondering if where my parents were and if they sometimes wondered at night if there should have been just one more person in their lives. It weighed heavily on me.

The loss of Cute, of Demetri (who I had thought I loved) and my parents — all at the same time. I had strong shoulders, but even I wasn't invincible. I ended up telling Jake part of the story about Cute. I told him how she got her name. He had found it pretty funny, everyone had, but late at night and into the early morning hours, after they all left, my smile would shake and fall and I felt my heart continue its descent into darkness.

When we finally located the artifact, Zach began talking about how we needed more power to get it. He didn't push me, because I never reacted. I may have scared him a bit. He kept going on about how the power they had wasn't enough though. All of them had their reasons for wanting the artifact, and I eventually learned that it was supposed to grant wishes or something stupidly impossible like that. None of us expected that after we had fought our way through masses of enemies into this stronghold that it would be watched by the council.

I had never known that Zach had chosen dark magic to be his ally. I should have guessed though. He was more twisted, and angrier. The others followed, he was their fearless leader after all. Jake did too.

Only I had expected it when the council put them to death.

I think that was what destroyed me.

Jarred and in pain, I resurfaced violently from my memories, gasping in air and feeling rather damp and watery. Hiei's hands were frozen on my shoulders and gripping almost painfully hard. I was shaking and barely holding myself up, but he was hurting me.

"Hiei?" I asked. Had it been anyone else, I would have knocked their hands off and been pissed at the intrusion onto my most important memories. But it wasn't just anyone, it was Hiei. The irritable fire demon wouldn't hurt me. Not on purpose. I reached up and touched his hand. He pulled away like I'd burned him and stared at me, something unnamable lurking in his eyes.

"I see why you picked me now." He commented. Confused, I knew that my face reflected that feeling when his anger softened a bit. "That Demetri guy, I look just fucking like him." He pointed out. He seemed a little bit upset by this. Hiei wasn't… entirely wrong on that point, but he wasn't entirely right either.

"It wasn't my choice." I said softly. This was apparently news, because the anger cleared completely and he just looked surprised. "I was half-dead, Hiei. I didn't even know what was happening until I woke up."

His adam's apple bobbed. He didn't quite believe me on that point. I most definitely wasn't lying though. Grabbing one of his hands, I pressed my face against it, grounding my self with his heat.

"That was fate's decision." I murmured, pulling away and just tracing the scars in his hand idly. The time and place that we were in was totally inappropriate for out conversation, but it had to happen just as it was. I needed to get this out and he needed to hear it. "I hated you. I just… wanted someone to blame, I suppose. You were there and you couldn't get away and you couldn't hurt me, you were safe. I chose to hate you because I guess that somewhere in me I felt that I could trust you." Leave it to me to compliment someone through a direct insult.

"What?" He said, having seemingly gotten out of whatever trance that I had thrown him into.

"On some level, yeah, you look like Demetri. Fuck him, though. I really do hate him, and not in any backwards way either. I hope he burns in hell." I said vehemently. My anger wasn't all that appropriate for the conversation, but Hiei seemed to find it pretty amusing if the smirk on his face said anything about it., then the expression became perturbed again.

"You named it Cute."

"What?" I asked, my brain had sort of short-circuited when Hiei said the word cute.

"Your dragon. You named it Cute." He repeated dubiously. I grinned wryly.

"It's a she, Hiei. And yes, _she_ liked the name cute." He officially thought that I was completely crazy, but that was okay. I was rather insane on more then a few levels.

"I hate to break up lovebirds, but you're both needed." A smooth voice said, sounding rather amused. We both looked up to find Kurama smirking at the both of us. I rose to my feet, swaying dangerously. Hiei didn't grab me, or help me up because I really would have refused his help anyway. I wouldn't have wanted it. It was hard for me to accept any kind of help, especially from someone that I held a measure of respect for.

At some point, I had begun to admire the powerful demon again. Even if he was really short, and even if his hair did have a mind of his own. He was a attractive and powerful and _mine_. Startled, I jumped, wondering where that thought had come from. It was practically a growl. Besides, I didn't _own_ anybody, least of all Hiei. Nor did I want to.

"Damn right." I heard someone growl, almost too quietly. Glancing beside me, I was surprised to find the object of my thoughts looking thoroughly on edge. My face exploded into red and I prayed that he didn't hear what I had been thinking about. He winced slightly. I barred off my thoughts and drove him out. I was not going to have this one way relationship. Either he let me hear what he was thinking about, or he heard nothing at all.

Thanking the tiny person who had taught me how to bar my mind, I stomped the rest of the way to Kurama. I was not some helpless git. I was a woman who had taken care of herself for most of her life. I didn't need some shorty to hold my hand or steal my privacy. It was important and mine only.

"What're you laughing at?" I snapped at Kurama's dancing green eyes. He shrugged.

"Oh, nothing." I snorted and turned away. "Just be careful not to attack him too much now, Hiei is a delicate man." I had to cough to cover my laugh on that one, especially when a nigh murderous glare was aimed in the offending half-demon's direction.

"Huh, if he's delicate, then I'm fucking _glass_." He took a long, steady look at me, before pointing at Koenma, implying that I should pay attention.

"Perhaps." I thought I'd heard that, but it was rather difficult to say.

—

I was not in the mood to deal with politics. Especially not faerie politics. They were backwards and gave me a headache in about ten seconds flat, simply because of how _annoying_ the fae were when they spoke. All the 'thees' and 'thous' were completely unnecessary and very, very irritating. Grinding my teeth, I attempted to listen, realizing that even though it wasn't important to me, it probably was important to the stupid woman that was somehow still standing.

I was still mulling over what I had learned.

There had been more going on in her past then I had been aware of, or would have even guessed had happened, but it did explain why she'd had such a huge panic attack when she'd started to transform so long before.

'I'm proud that I'm becoming a demon.' A tiny smirk threatened to tug up my lips. Damn right she was proud. Humans were worthless creatures. I glanced over again. She would be pissed if she heard that out of my mouth. After all, I hung around the humans didn't I, 'they must mean something'. Just imagining that argument gave me a headache.

I hadn't chosen to hang around the humans, but nobody seemed to understand that distinction. I really hadn't ever wanted to be stuck in that world, trapped into cars that went so slow, or forced to go into these huge public places filled with, basically, prey. Weak, easily, sheep-like prey.

They were defenseless and powerless. Half the time I thought the same of Angela, but she continued to surprise me with her large cache of insight and ingenuity, constantly coming up with ways to get around her death-certificate (handicap) and come out on top. I had half a mind to ask her what some of them were, but she would never have told me.

That woman was as tight-lipped as they come. I never would have even suspected that she'd conquered a dragon, or been taught how to use a blade by the fae (though it would explain her skill). Nor would I have imagined that she had been chosen by one of the nobles as a potential _mate_. That put a sour taste in my mouth and I fought the rising tide of anger at the thought of the look-alike that lived in that woman's head.

He was absolutely infuriating, and admittedly, I found it rather satisfying that she, more or less, thought the same of the man that had betrayed her and left her to die.

She still thought that he was inhumanly attractive though. That was irritating.

Some part of me was very territorial of the things that I cared about, not that I cared about her, and I just wanted to close my fangs over her stupid throat to make it loud and clear the the retards surrounding her that she was _mine_ and _only mine_. I swallowed.

Another dangerous line of thinking. I was supposed to be listening, not imagining up other's deaths.

"We can't cancel the Demon Tournament." Well, at least the brat agreed. Koenma still treated both me and Kurama like he some measure of control over us, but he didn't. We only listened sometimes because our interests would be in agreement. I was still in control of a large portion of Demon World regardless of what he said. He just didn't have that kind of power over the chaotic and violent dimension.

Nobody did, not even the A and S-class demons that claimed to rule it. Demons didn't follow rules. They put up with some measure of law because most saw the necessity, but none liked having their freedoms limited in any way shape or form and they fought tooth and nail against anyone who said otherwise.

Hell, many of them hated the Demon Tournament, but it didn't matter. That rule was a necessity and it appealed to the volatile nature of the beast anyway.

"They'll only leave if they get Angela, though, and I'm inclined to agree." I was listening to that one and a fury built in my head. I wasn't the one to say anything though. Someone else beat me to it.

"They only intend to kill her, and we can't afford to lose Hiei. Do you intend to weaken us." Kurama pointed out calmly. I growled at the interjection, but agreed with what he had said.

"She has earned her death sentence."

Seconds of silence passed and I looked up.

"At what point are you idiots going to realize that she was framed." My voice rang out. "I wouldn't have pegged you as a murderer, Koenma."

Really, I can't fucking stand politics.

Those light brown eyes widened and I didn't bother looking over at the stupid woman. I could feel her stare and the stutter of her heart. I didn't exactly know how I felt about that.

"Is this true?" He finally asked, directing his gaze to Angela.

"I… yes." She said, hand dropping to where her sword should have been. I saw the nervous swallow when she realized that she was totally unarmed except for a bit of magic. She couldn't have done much with her back in that state anyway.

Koenma seemed to pause and chew on his words slowly. I felt the sharp gaze of the faerie-shrew drilling in the side of Angela's head and directed one of my own right back at her. Yeah, she could take her shriveled hands and shove it. Growling sub-audibly, I was both angry at that old lady as well as myself for being so protective.

I only acted like this because if she died, I would too. It was self-preservation.

'_Yeah, all those times you chatted with her, or kept her company were just for self-preservation, right?_'

My fists tightened. Koenma had turned to ask the shrew if our claims were true, and she looked like she was about to start lying. That was when my already short fuse finally ran out.

"Everyone, yes, the council included." I snarled, my voice echoing. I glanced at Kurama, who just shrugged at my silent question of what he thought he was doing. "This is my land, and my mate, and my title you're standing on." I said, kind of glad for the extra magic afforded to make me louder then I really was.

"Not only did you trespass onto Demon territory, but you kidnapped the mate of its leader and proceeded to fill this house with your disgusting flowery magic." I snarled, letting my aura leak out and begin clearing away the magic transforming the grounds into some disgusting play-place for the fae. I silently beckoned all of the demons who lived on the grounds.

"You are in no place to make demands. So tell me what you came for, or you're going to be inviting the wrath of Demon World onto your head and no one wants that." This had gone beyond Angela's safety at that point. I wasn't the type of leader to force my followers into anything, but I wasn't the only one who was downright angry that I couldn't leave for a few months and not have a bunch of idiot faeries starting an uprising.

Demon World politics wasn't like the little dance that the fae and the Spirit World were putting on. It was a kill or be killed world and we liked it that way. No vote was put into appointing a king. Only strength.

It wasn't Nightingale that answered, but the more silent of the two.

Mauve stood and silenced everyone with a wave of her hand.

Her chilly almost-white eyes bore into me, and then she smiled.

"We came to warn you, small demon." She said. The Summer Lady looked upset when she said this and that was what tipped me off that it had been the true purpose of this meeting. "Your mate is part of something bigger then she can understand, but the prophecy of the dragons rests on her shoulders." She said, and my eyes widened. She wasn't serious, right? Looking at the woman next to me, I could tell that she had no idea what in the world the woman was talking about.

"Then, her dragon —"

"Was the nameless one, yes. It chose her, little Lord." I could have gone without all the references to being small.

"You must be Mab." I said clearly, and the fae seemed mildly pleased at my realization.

"Perhaps." She said, and her features transformed into something more defined, older, sharper, somehow prettier.

"And here I thought that perhaps Mauve had undergone a transformation." Angela sighed underneath her breath. She seemed to still be on edge, but much more relaxed now that her imminent death was more or less out of the equation.

Ignoring her for the time being, because that stupid dress was intensely distracting, I looked Queen Mab dead in the eyes.

"So, the other girl —"

"She is possessed by the temptress, an old one." Kurama seemed beyond perturbed at this, and I relinquished my hold on the conversation to him.

"What does this have to do with the prophecy?" He asked, almost eerily calm. He could handle the fae with near ease because of that blasted patience of his.

"I only came to warn you of potential events. I like this world, young Lords, I don't want to see it destroyed." Angela did perk up at that, and she looked flabbergasted.

"Destroyed?!" She squeaked. I nearly laughed at her shock. "Okay, what in the world do I have to do with the world being destroyed?!"

"Sorry, that is up to you to learn." The woman said and then beckoned to the irritated Summer Lady. They both stood and she pulled up and far more elegant portal then any of us could. Within seconds, they had disappeared, the pavilion, the other people, everything just vanished, and we were left standing in the gardens surrounding the huge castle that was my property.

"Hot damn, that is a castle." Angela said, staring at it wide-eyed. I felt kind of smug getting that reaction out of her.

The staff was standing out front, waiting for Kurama and I to appear. He had been helping with the ruling work in my absence, and I knew that his vow to secrecy had weighed heavily on his relationship with Eva. He was very tight-lipped though, I wondered if anyone knew everything about that relationship other then Eva.

Probably not.

"Woah, hands off!" Angela yelped. The twins had already reached her. Two mischievous women with very lilac hair that I had taken in years before. They helped because they wanted to, and they were good at what they did, so I didn't really care. I didn't make much of a mess, but the other boarders did. All of them from various walks of life that had ended up in my care at some point. The castle had once been a quiet, foreboding place.

"Lord Hiei! Kurama-sama!" Not so much, anymore.

"They actually like you." There was the sarcastic comment. "It's nice."

I glanced at Angela, seeing her soft smile at how the people in the castle were. I rolled my eyes.

"Imbeciles." I commented, expression surly. She just shook her head.

—

For all the grumbling that Hiei did, he was surprisingly nice to the inhabitants of his house. Or at least, they definitely liked him a lot. Many of them were pretty quiet, and some were just downright odd-looking, and others seemed to think I was food right up until they recognized that I was the girl who had ended up Hiei's mate.

He certainly lived around more then a few bloodthirsty individuals, but that was all in a days work for Demon World. It just didn't work the same. I was also more demon then human by now, so my odd looks were usually kept to a minimum. Exploring about, I had been given express permission to go pretty-much anywhere I wanted, I found that there was a library and kitchens and tons of really good food.

It was really functional and well-kept and even though a lot of it was stone and a bit on the dim side, it was filled with life and noise. I had to ask around a lot before someone finally recognized my description of the small, voiceless girl that I had been trapped with.

They said that she had been with the fae and that she had left with them too. I didn't know why this made me so upset, but it did. I had wanted to say thank you to her.

I wondered what she had done to be thrown in the dungeons. The fae weren't really for such a normal style of dealing with someone. They rather liked public torture or death over just throwing a person in the dungeon. It was just a feeling, but I had the inkling that I was probably going to meet her again before my adventure was up.

It took a few hours, but eventually Koenma finally called me to where the council was discussing what to do with the new information. The fae didn't give warnings lightly, whatever Mab had been saying had been a big deal. I had really hoped that it had been Mauve and that she had changed over time, but of course not.

If you're curious, the real Winter Lady acts like a crack addict. She's off her rocker insane and really vicious. Mab was obviously anything but. She was vicious too, but she had a very different style.

Anyway, so I had been called up. Walking through the halls, I noted that my feet were pounding because of all the exploring while in bare feet on rock. I was still wearing that dress too. No other clothes had turned up, so I was sticking with my illusionary dress. It was quite comfortable and very cooling, but I still wanted my t-shirts and shorts over it.

The twins, who had been escorting me, I hadn't been going about alone, lead me up like ten flights of stairs before we finally reached the level that the council was at. I hadn't gotten to that floor yet. Down had seemed more interesting then up. The fact that this floor held Hiei's room perked my interest though.

"You have to go to the meeting first."

"Yes you do." They answered when I begged them to show me. I pouted at the two. Their names were Valaria and Melinda. They were nice, but very formal and almost too uptight.

I wanted to beg more, but we had arrived. They introduced me and then I was left to the dogs.

Taking a long, lingering look at the wooden door that was closed behind me, I gathered my courage and then turned back around to the fifteen staring faces. The council had brought more wizards, but this was the part of it that made up the decision-making faction. A bunch of old fogies, basically.

"Good afternoon, Angela." Koenma's voice echoed in the room. I looked up at the surprisingly young-looking leader. I wasn't fooled though, he was actually like two-thousand, or some asinine number like that. My legs felt shaky and I knew that I was still very weak. The two girls had taken some serious healing magic to my back, which had apparently had a vertebrae out of place. It had been blood on my back, and almost a miracle that nothing had happened.

I didn't believe that. I never got out of things with such luck. It was by chance that I had gotten through that safely. Mab had not intended to cripple me, only to scare me. It was a warning, and one that was well-hidden. I could almost picture her saying it, hissing with that icy voice, staring me down with those glowing blue eyes, just waiting for me to understand. I had been trained with the fae, they didn't do anything without a reason.

'_Be careful. I didn't pick you for no reason. Don't die._' Nightingale had been there too, but I didn't understand her reasons. She had not only danced around the subject, but said things to throw us off… Almost as if she had been stalling. Why? I couldn't just throw it out as some backwards fae logic. It was done on purpose. Also, why did Mab pretend to be Mauve (even though she didn't do the best job). None of it was adding up.

"Chair." I answered, trying to be polite. It was hard to say what was on the line in this conversation and I didn't want to be on the wrong end. The other wizards that held a decision in whatever it what that I was invited in for (and it wouldn't be anything good, the law and I had never gotten along) shifted almost uncomfortably.

"You are probably wondering why we called you here." Someone said in a voice that was distinctly feminine. Looking over the fourteen other wizards, I tried to pick out the speaker from the sea of faces.

"Well, yes." I muttered. _The last time I was called here, someone tried to drop a death sentence on my head._ "I admit that I am rather curious." There was some muttering over that, more shifting.

Why is it that politicians can't just spit out what they mean?

"We have heard some interesting things in the past few days, Ms. Portman." My ears perked up at the sound of my last name. I hadn't been called by that in a long time. "And it had been brought to our attention that perhaps a mistake had been made the last time you were brought in front of this council."

I froze, my arm burning with all of the pointed stares at it. Once again, I had to fight to keep from covering it with my hand. Waiting patiently, or at least attempting to, a bead of sweat started the journey down the back of my neck.

"Mr. Jaganshi, who we have no reason to doubt, has made it apparent that trickery had potentially been used to frame you for your previous crimes." The speaker continued to change, and it was beginning to frustrate me, but regardless, I felt some kind of hope clawing its way into my heart.

"For that we owe you our deepest apologies." That was said through clenched teeth. "And perhaps a gift to right our wrongs toward you." My expression was distrustful at best. What could they possibly offer, other then my arm, in order to right their wrongs. "We would like to return your dragon to you."

My heart stopped. They could give me Cute?

—

Clenching my fingers so hard was making them tingle and my palms burn. I couldn't let go though, it was the only thing holding me onto the real world at that second, because things were suddenly very, very surreal.

The words just kept pouring out of the woman's mouth, growing further and further away from me and I just stared. The story was getting so complex, and I didn't understand most of it.

Just… prophecies, thousands of years, the thought that my mother and father had been keeping things from me? It wasn't possible. My eyes kept shifting around, searching for whatever was certainly pranking me. What was I supposed to think? I couldn't just decide all of a sudden that obviously I had magic, and obviously everything that I had gone through had been orchestrated, and that it was very apparent that my parents had been a part of something bigger too and that what they had gone through hadn't been on accident either.

I didn't know what upset me more, the fact that they hadn't told me, or the fact that my mother would have rather died than given me up to the angel.

I was so willing when it had all been for naught.

"But maybe this is how it was meant to be." She finally murmured, and I stared up at my mother.

She had always been so pretty, and so warm, and so full of life and passion. I had always felt left behind, just because I wasn't pretty, or strong, or all that smart. I had been average at best as a child. I had always felt like such a huge dissapointment, but to know that she would have died for me, to know that my parents had cared enough to protect me from all of the things that wanted to influence.

They tried to let me live a normal childhood, and for that I could only be thankful. They had loved me, and that meant more then any suffering I went through.

My parents had been saved, my tall, strong dad, and my beautiful, vibrant mother, they had both lived, and the fact that I was the cause made it worth it. I just wished that I had been able to understand that months before.

"I made a mistake, mom." I finally said, and her cornflower blue eyes made me feel very small.

"That's why I'm here." She murmured, and tugged me close to her.

Human warmth is something that is different from any other kind of warmth. It just has this life to it, this energy that means more then anything else. I was trapped inside of my unconscious, my body having been taken over by a being that was millennia old, and from the wrong universe, filled with regrets and anger, both at myself and at others.

I needed a hug, basically.

"I don't know how to fix it." I continued, feeling my voice begin to wobble. Even if she didn't exist, even if this was just a figment of my imagination, it didn't matter. Her hands settled under my shoulders and then she kneeled, brushing my hair out of my face.

"I can't fix everything for you, even if I want to." I took a deep breath. "I can't go out there and make everything work." She seemed upset by this, and I let my breath out, hiding my increasingly upset expression. "I can't be with you, Evie." She said, using my pet name.

I smiled slightly at that.

"I know, Mom." I answered. It was so much easier to talk when it was her. I didn't feel like I had to put up a front, I didn't feel like I had to be anyone else. I could say what I needed to say.

"I can help though." My startling eyes trained on her face and she smiled that stupid dorky smile that she always did when I was being stubbornly pessimistic. I bit my lip. It was not an appropriate moment to snort with laughter, it really wasn't. "The fate of the world is in your hands."

She dropped that sentence like a bomb, and I floundered under the weight of it.

"I wish you luck." She whispered and her form was beginning to disappear. My eyes widened.

"Mom!" I yelled, and wrapped my arms around her again, desperate for that heat, and that love.

"I believe in you." I don't know how she knew what I needed to hear, but mothers have that sixth sense for what they need to do. My arms tightened. "Make us proud."

Then, in an explosion of tiny lights drifting away before winking out in the darkness, my mother was gone.

And I woke up.

—

"How do I know you're not lying?" I said, my uncertainty showing through. They all seemed to glance at each other, as if surprised at my answer.

"You mean you do not know?" That woman finally asked, breaking the heavy silence. I raised an eyebrow, wanting to snap 'obviously not', but decided that holding my tongue and simply shaking my head was the better choice of action.

More muttering. It was really becoming a trend with this group. I tried to pick out who I might know or had heard of, but they all wore large robes and cowls, even Koenma, but he wore the hood down.

Somehow, none of these details mattered though. The fact that having my companion back was a possibility overshadowed everything. Almost like the day when I had realized that I never had to give up Hiei. I didn't have to hand him over to someone else, I didn't have to pretend. I didn't have to go without my strength.

I had been powerful with the dragon as my backup. I had been at peace. Even when the betrayal nearly destroyed me, I got through it with Cute at my side.

Perhaps I didn't have to lose everything. What a foreign thought.

"Do you have reason to doubt us?" Well, no, that was true, but - "We can return her, but only for a favor."

Ah, there was the catch. It was easier to understand why they would give a gift like that if they expected something in return.

"That depends on what is." What was I saying? In order to get Cute back?

"You must retrieve the one being controlled by the Temptress."

My eyes widened.

"Done." I would have done anything, really.

"Call in the Jagan-Bearer." A chinese woman suddenly said, her old voice and accent filling the room. A shiver ran down my back. What had I gotten myself into?

The door was opened, and a very irate-looking Hiei stepped in. His shoulders were hunched up and he was practically stomping. I sent him a funny look, but he didn't even glance at me.

'You said yes.' He grumped.

'They're giving me my dragon, Hiei. I could hardly turn them down.' His face seemed to contort into something similar to pain for a moment, before going back to his normal scowl. He sighed and then stood up straight facing a specific area of the council.

"Are you sure about this?" He asked, quite directly might I add. A specific person leaned forward and a dim smile spread beneath that cowl.

"You are to teach her." The person (I couldn't tell if it was a woman or a man, the voice was oddly distorted) answered assuredly and Hiei just closed his eyes for a moment, as if battling through some inner dilemma, then reopened them and turned to me.

"You heard her. Follow." He snarled out, and then stomped to the door. I waited, looking between Hiei and the council uncertainly, waffling.

"Oh, one last thing." A woman said, and then glanced toward Koenma. He seemed to think about what was about to be said for a very long moment, and then slowly nodded. The woman rose fluidly and then came down the stairs.

"Stay still." She ordered. I tried not to move, but I was a pretty fidgety person by nature and couldn't get myself to do so. The shadowy woman sent me a fairly sharp glare and I realized that one of her eyes was made of some some sort of metallic mechanism.

Well, I say eye, I really mean that like a quarter of her face had been reconstructed from steel and glass. Instead of gasping, or feeling the urge to look away, I let my gaze linger and inspected the odd contraption, amazed at the craftsmanship. Even though it was startling, the eye rotated and dilated and seemed to have a dim sentient glow to it. It was fascinating, and obviously really cool.

I'm not going to make a claim that it was pretty, because it wasn't. It was a garish slam to a face that would have been model-material otherwise, but it somehow fit the sharp gaze that was being pointed at me.

Blinking, I flashed the oddly familiar woman a nervous smile before closing my eyes and trying to go still. I could only obscure my vision for a few seconds until opening them felt like a necessity when her hands came to a rest on my shoulders. I didn't trust strangers very easily, especially not ones as unusual as that person.

"What are you going to do?" I finally asked, unable to contain my curiosity (and intense paranoia) any longer. She blinked.

"You will see." And her eyes drifted closed, well, one of them did. The other continued burning into me, a bright, unyielding orange trained on my face. I nervously swallowed and let my lids drift closed again.

'Do not open your eyes again, or this will really hurt.' This time the voice echoed in my head and I squeezed them shut in preparation. A wave of cool energy washed over me and made me teeth twinge as it passed over them. The energy tasted vaguely metallic.

I began to have doubts. What if the council was trying to trick me? What if they were going to put a tracking spell on me? What if they weren't really going to somehow bring back Cute? My thoughts grew more restless and then energy clanged and echoed painfully because of it, therefore making my feelings worse.

The energy began grabbing the thoughts and hauling them out of the way, seemingly looking for something. I unconsciously went into a frenzy, outwardly knowing that the energy wasn't going to hurt me, but not able to discern between the two when it reached past my conscious thoughts.

Suddenly all of the places that energy touched slowed and were warm, not cool. I went still and felt very drowsy, then the flurry darkened and awareness was shut off.

—

I felt empty upon awakening. Not in pain, not hurting, not brimming with energy, or completely without it, I was just blank; as if some hard-drive inside of me had been thrown out and then replaced. Or not replaced at all as the case may be.

The sunlight filtering in through the windows to my left was bright and cheerful, but it didn't even make me think of smiling. I just stared at the large window set back into the wall blankly and then looked around the rest of the room. There wasn't much to see. It was a very large, square, stone bedroom, and I was situated on a bed right in the middle. There was dust in the air, causing the light to filter through it in an odd way.

I pushed up onto my elbows and then dragged myself up to the headboard, leaning against it. I was tired from just doing that, my muscles felt nonexistent. I felt nonexistent. Leaning my head back, I just stared at the ceiling, not thinking about anything in particular.

I began to hum some song that I had never been able to remember the lyrics to, but they came to me easily in the moment and I stared out of the window, singing quietly. I wasn't a bad singer, nor was I excessively talented. I always sounded a bit gravelly, and I hated singing in front of people.

It was something that I did to calm down when I was stressed. Something was wrong, very wrong. My heart felt dead, and I felt like a fish that had been out of water for too long and had flopped over to dry in the sun.

"Oh, you're up!" A bubbly voice gushed. My humming abruptly stopped as Botan leaned through the door, her brilliant smile making the sun seem warmer. I blinked and cleared my throat.

"Yeah. Where am I?" Straight to the point, then.

"At the council headquarters in Demon World." She supplied readily. "I hope that you slept well?"

I did feel well-rested, and didn't wake up with any debilitating injuries, headaches, or back-pains, so it was worthy of a nod. Slipping the rest of the way through, I saw that she was holding fresh clothes, a towel and breakfast. My mood perked up and the odd, empty feeling took a back-seat for that second.

"Oh, you're awesome." I gushed, feeling much friendlier at the prospect of food.

"Well, thank you." The toiletries were set on the dresser opposite of me, but she deposited the food on my lap. Her odd accent took a little bit of getting used to, but I didn't mind it so much.

"Thanks for the food." I said, before picking up the fork and scooping up a huge bite. It froze inches away from my mouth, and then I set it down slowly.

"Is there… something you need?" I asked to the candy-colored woman, who was fidgeting nervously a few feet to my right. She seemed to chew on her lip and glance at the door, before sighing.

"How are you doing?" She asked, sitting on the edge of the bed that I didn't own. It was the only thing keeping me from shoving her off.

"Uh… good?" A little bit disturbed by her questions though.

"Really? You don't… feel any different?" That emptiness popped to mind, and I bit at my lip.

"No." I answered, raising an eyebrow.

Now, most people would have left at that point. It would have been a bit awkward, and things would have been a little tense, but the question would have just been left and I would have stayed silent about the odd feelings in my stomach. Botan is not most people.

"Angela." Her voice seemed to drop a bit, and I realized that I witnessing the impossible. Botan was not joking around, she was serious, and actually a bit calm about it. Her eyes still flickered nervously, and I could tell that it wasn't in her personality to be quiet. "I have to know."

I looked away to the window, and felt like I was caged in. Everything that was happening was keeping me strapped into only a few places. Once, I had adventured.

"I did sleep well." I said, but I knew that it wasn't what she wanted. "But I feel… empty." Saying it aloud gave the word more weight.

That seemed to be exactly what she hadn't wanted to hear.

"I… I'll be right back." She got up, smoothing down her kimono. "Eat up!" She added with her usual smile, but it was forced cheer and she was quick to hurry out of the room.

I stared at the door, trying to comprehend what had just happened, but food was waiting, so I ate instead. My biggest talent was avoiding problems after all.

—

"Wow, I'm used to looking _down_ at you." I commented, because upon opening my eyes, I had found Botan shaking me awake, a very tired-looking Hiei in tow.

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. From below or above, he had really long eyelashes. At first it had been kind of off-putting, because you imagine Hiei as being very manly when you hear about him. There are more then a few stories that precede meeting _the_ Hiei Jaganshi, and somehow you get this picture in your head of someone tall, dark, handsome and very, very violent.

Hiei is short, for one. I mean, like, he barely clears five feet, he has nicer hair then most girls I've met (lucky bastard), and on top of that has a really _pretty_ face. Like, he is attractive. Really attractive. Even if he is short, he's muscular, and has a really nice voice, and the girly attributes made him look kind of like an anime character. The bags under his eyes were unusual though.

That's when it hit me.

"Why didn't I feel you walk in?" I asked, and some flavor of true horror began to grow in my heart. Botan glanced back at Hiei, her mouth opening as if to answer, but the man beat her to the punch.

"You can unlock your dragon now." He said. My heart leapt and I felt my first honest grin in ages cross my face, but then I noted Hiei's oddly exhausted looked again and the smile fell.

"Hiei. What's wrong?" Botan looked nervous and it was irritating Hiei to no end.

"Hey Botan, can I just chat with Hiei for a minute." The man looked like he was going to protest, but I shot him a flat look and then then smiled at Botan. She nodded and left the room with a wave. I turned back. "Hiei, I can't feel anything." I said.

He winced slightly.

"It's not just an absence of heat or thoughts, but no overlay, and for the first time… I can't feel my arm." I knew that I sounded scared, but it was impossible for me to pretend that everything was okay. Not in front of him.

"Apparently two soul bonds, ones like ours, aren't possible at the same time. It's too dangerous for your spirit to separate that much. So it was replaced."

"That's not possible." I whispered.

"Apparently it is."

I felt hysterics rising in my throat and looked down.

"Can you go away?" It sounded harsh, but I couldn't break down in front of him either. His eyes stayed on me, and he didn't move. I felt my temper rising. "Get out." I said, but the words that should have been hissed were just watery and cracked at the end.

"God dammit." I cursed, feeling my resolve beginning to crack, and my brain-to-mouth filter shuddering under the pressure of my rising ire. "Seriously, I really don't want to see you right now."

He seemed confused, if nothing else.

"Isn't this what you wanted."

I deflated completely, losing all of my energy.

"Yes." I pulled up my knees. "Why won't you _get out_ of my head?!" I said, and then flopped backwards onto the bed, hair splaying out in disarray. His unimpressed gaze kind of burned, but it was hard to tell what he thought of everything.

It was to have to guess, rather then simply picking up on what he was feeling. He had particular nervous ticks and sometimes I could just feel what he felt if it was loud enough.

"Well, you thoughts aren't a running peanut-gallery in my head anymore." I did pick it up then. He was upset in his own backward way as well. Being snarky was his coping mechanism. I tilted my head up to glare at him.

"I am the funniest. The most comedic." My voice was kind of thick, even as I waved my feet in the air to get across my point.

Normally the silence surrounding us was comfortable, because neither of us were much for pointless chatting and small-talk, but this silence was anything but. It was heavy and awkward, and the elephant in the room was crushing us both.

It was testament to how much Hiei cared that he had bothered to stay.

"You know, I never did hear your thoughts. Not like that." I finally commented. He glanced at me, glowing red eyes digging into my skin. It wasn't uncomfortable. It was almost as if he was trying to scrutinize my meaning out of my physical presence.

Rolling into a sitting position and then off of the bed, walking up to him. Standing, I was taller then him. Not by a freakishly huge amount, but enough that it made the relationship a bit awkward. I mean, I tall and he was small, but I was still so much weaker and he made me feel safe.

I picked up the hand that I was all too certain was tapping his sword by that point.

"But the nice part is that even though you're not in here." I rested it on my head, showing through my actions that even though we were no longer soul-bonded… "You're still in here." He had become irreversibly important to me. I rested that hand on my heart.

And it pissed me off to no end.

"You enjoy dancing with danger, don't you?" He nearly growled. I grinned impishly and let go of his hand.

"I do seem to do that a lot, don't I?" His expression could have boiled an egg. Leaning forward, I realized that if I wanted to, I could trap him with my arm. "This is really backwards, you know that right?" He seemed to be shrinking backwards, but wasn't cutting my hand off yet.

As if I was actually trapping him anyway. I didn't even have two arms.

"Step away." His voice sounded strained at that point. I tipped my head and raised an eyebrow, confusion written all over my face. I did move back some, and he seemed to suck in a breath.

Caged bird wasn't what I saw though, even though that had been in my imagination, I saw a predator.

"Hiei, are you okay?" He swallowed hard and didn't answer. I stayed quiet and stepped back again. "Ha, sorry, I didn't mean to stress you out or anything."

He laughed darkly at that and crossed his arms, still not looking at me.

"That's one way of looking at it." I shivered and then felt a surge of alien thoughts steal over my head.

"Hiei." He 'hn'ed in my general direction. "I thought that a prudent piece of information would be to tell you that I'm still turning into a demon." His eyes snapped open.


	3. But Thank You

I don't think that any of us expected the huge flash of light as we checked our belongings just outside of the castle. Things never seem to happen how we plan for them to. We couldn't wait on searching for Eva, because she was farther away every day, not just physically, but mentally.

A soul can only be without a body for so long before it starts to forget that it once existed and then it drifts and more or less dies — without ever being able to truly die.

It's a horrible half-existence, but the ghost isn't even aware of it. I didn't want Eva to disappear. What was I saying? Of course I didn't.

"Kurama!" A warning yell rang out and I instinctively dropped my bag and slid back behind the door that I had just emerged from. Good thing too, because an explosion rocked the stone front of the castle a second later. Waiting a few seconds for the dust to settle, and to make sure that it would be the only blast, I finally straightened from my crouch.

A glance around the door-frame told me all that I really needed to know. The bright flash of white hadn't really been an explosion, but some of the mass amounts of energy given off by a long-distance teleport. I didn't even know if I could do that, and I had magic to spare.

"What is it?" Angela yelled, I searched through the dust and then locked eyes with Hiei and Angela who had similarly been emerging from the building. Squinting, I tried to see what had teleported to us, and whether or not it was a threat.

"Not sure." I answered, and then pulled a rose out of my hair, just to be certain. Things had been tense and uncertain in those weeks, and caution had never hurt anyone.

The light finally died down and the dust cleared enough for us to see, and what I saw almost killed me. I didn't say anything, I didn't even move. I didn't get shocked like some people did, I didn't freeze up, or run, or freak out, I just sat back and looked at what I was dealing with, trying to wrap my head around the ideas.

I stayed calm, but on the inside I could feel my stomach beginning to twist unpleasantly. It was almost as bad as when that creep had commented about my hair during the dark tournament.

"Eva!" Someone yelled excitedly.

The figure only twenty feet in front of me rose fluidly from her kneeling position, settling back on her feet, and shaking out short black hair.

My jaw clenched.

"Don't. It's not her." I said, holding my hand up to Angela. Hiei already knew based on my weapon and expression, but Angela was not quite so calm. She didn't move though, because she wasn't some useless idiot, she was a trained warrior.

I stepped forward instead, expression growing angry. Freakishly gold eyes spotted me and then that face twisted into horrid grin.

"You must be Kurama." She said, and the voice was the same. "I've heard all about you." She wouldn't be able to break my temper, or my nerve, but it was nice to see her try.

"Likewise. You must be Lasciel." She blinked, and that grin only grew.

"Wow, you are hot." She added, and of course the sultry voice got to me. I was more then a bit attached to the original speaker.

"That's very kind of you." I didn't even get truly angry. Anything that could get up and be chatting like that after teleporting was not an enemy that I would want to fight, not as a human anyway.

She looked down at her fingernails and idly picked at them, calmly watching my every move, a favor which I returned in full.

It wasn't at all like what I was expecting. I had only been expecting to see this woman after chasing her down to a battlefield. Instead she had come to me… but why?

"Eva." I said firmly. The creature cocked an eyebrow, seemingly confused by my sudden actions. "I know that you can hear me you insolent twat." I added, deciding that it might help if I used some of her insults.

I continued to get that odd look. The thing couldn't even figure out what I was doing. Or it simply already knew that my efforts were futile, and was confused that I would even continue trying. I tried to clear those whispers out of my mind.

"Why do you keep trying?" She finally asked. My fists clenched. I didn't know why I kept trying. I couldn't just stop, that was the decision that I had made, but now I couldn't help wondering, why didn't I stop? All of this effort, and it was unlikely, night impossible, that she would be able to come back, so why did I continue to push and cry out.

Why did I continue to search?

"Because I have faith in her." I answered simply, my heart no longer torn. I knew what I was doing. I had always known that this could be a possibility and it had never stopped me before. It wasn't about to start.

Her eyes widened slightly, but then she just scoffed.

"I didn't come here to talk about faith, little fox." There was age in that voice. I gave her a long look.

"Then what did you come for?" I asked, deciding to humor her. She was obviously rather similar to me in personality.

"I came bearing gifts. Something that each of you desperately wants, but that none of you have." The other two were definitely listening, but it was funny how Hiei and Angela thought that they were similar and yet they were so inherently different.

Hiei looked mildly interested, but I knew that if it involved betraying someone he cared about, he wouldn't do it. He might claim that he would, but he wouldn't. Angela on the other hand just looked rather disturbed, like she wanted to know what the thing was talking about, but at the same time, didn't want to hear it.

One was rather selfish, or at least claimed that they were, and the other was just inherently curious. Well, they both knew the dangers of temptation. Suddenly it clicked.

"You're the temptress." I said slowly. This time those golden eyes didn't drift, they snapped onto my face.

They seemed rather cat-eyed, I realized and her hackles were rising. No, not cat-eyed. Snake-eyed. The temptress.

"You do not have the right to address me by that name, trash." She hissed. My eyes narrowed.

"We do not accept any gifts, temptress." I almost wanted to order her to leave, but I needed Eva back. I could feel my own hackles rising. I had already been on the edge, and it was getting difficult to stay calm. Her jaw clenched.

"Don't speak." My temper wavered. "Trash." And there it went.

—

Interfering with an angry demon is not only very dangerous, but really stupid in general. A demon won't just calm down and back off, you will only serve to make them angry at you as well, which is unhelpful to all parties.

Angela looked like she wanted to leap out when the creature in the courtyard started in on calling Kurama trash. I held up a hand. The fox could take care of himself. This was his fight.

If he wanted Eva back, then he was going to have to grow a backbone and fight anyway.

"Why would you want such a useless little girl around anyway." His hair was beginning to look more silver then red. "For demons, you picked very bad humans." She pressed.

My fists clenched. That was a direct insult to my mate.

"If she thinks I'm bad, she'd hate to see the rest of the human race." Angela quietly commented, setting a hand on my shoulder and leaning past me to watch.

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, noting the gaunt look to her face and the bags under her eyes, then I gave the hand on my shoulder a long look. It wasn't heavy, but it was intrusive. It brought up the thought though, had she ever touched me so willingly?

Her hand tightened and I looked over to see Kurama, my eyes widened, he wasn't in control anymore.

Leaping forward, the man transformed midair and then both of them disappeared in a crack of white light.

—

Time is valuable. You only have so much of it in one lifetime, and if you waste it, you look up one day and realize that its gone. You had only been given a particular amount and you had used it all on useless things. Time is money, food, property, happiness, sadness, lives, excitement, everything that you've ever done and will do is on your credit of time.

I had almost disappeared in that rush of time, that ever-flowing river of hopes, dreams and memories. If I took just one second of that time to reflect, I would realize how much of it had been wasted.

I had made a place that should have fulfilled my dreams and everything that I had wanted, complete to an apartment that was a little bit too familiar, but even with all of that time spent doing so, I had still forgotten the most important people in my life.

My mother and father, who were gone. My home, which was no longer open to me. My past friends, who were dead. Then there was Genkai, with her stubborn, backwards optimism, Botan with her cheer and support, Angela, who was protective, Hiei, who was just always mad, and Kuwabara and Yuusuke, the two idiots. Oh, then there's Yukina! She's really sweet.

I had made a lot of friends during that time, and it only would have happened if I had been forced to go stay with Genkai. Suddenly, I wanted to appreciate them more. They really had been nice, but I hadn't exactly been a functioning human-being at the time.

Hands pressed against my shoulders. Real hands, hands with substance, and I took a violent breath in, startled awake.

The air burned my lungs and my awareness brought a wall of pain crashing against me, it was worth it though. Real air, and real weight and real lungs. It did hurt though. Someone shook my shoulders again and I coughed, teeth grinding to keep from yelling. My shoulder and back burned like fire, every jostle reminding me as to why I never did extreme sports.

But it was heaven. It meant that I wasn't dreaming. It meant that somewhere, somehow, someone had gotten me outside of my consciousness. There was a weight though, and I knew that I didn't have much time.

I had been awarded just a little bit more though, and if it was possible to win I would never stop fighting. A yell finally reached my hearing and I strained to understand it.

"Eva." My diaphragm immediately halted any and all movement to keep me breathing and my muscles all locked into place at once.

"Look, I know you're angry." I felt a rising tide of unstoppable feelings and I nearly wished for that silence.

"I know that I hurt you." I wanted to scream 'excuses' at the top of my lungs and lash out in rightful vengeance.

"I know. And I'm sorry." There was a tiny crack, perhaps one that only I would pick up on. After all, I knew all of those voice quirks the best.

"But I need you to wake up."

My heart fell and then my eyes snapped open.

A wave of agony followed the action closely.

—

Long, dark eyelashes fluttered for a second and then the form on the ground groaned.

"Ow." A tiny smile began to pick up the edges of my lips. She looked up at me with those startling, pale blue eyes and seemed to swallow. "Shuuichi."

I didn't know how she recognized me that easily, seeing as my hair was more then a bit silver, and I had fox ears, but she didn't miss a beat.

"Morning." I answered. She stared blankly and then a tiny laugh issued from her lips. She winced seconds after it. Taking a deep breath, I returned to my original form. She seemed a little bit more wide-eyed at that.

"Uh, I take that we have some things to talk about?" She seemed to be taking everything very calmly. Reaching up, her fingers trembled as she touched my face. "My back hurts."

I did laugh at that, just a quick snort, but she seemed to be glad that I could still smile.

"Man, it felt like I was only gone for five minutes." She said, even though I could tell that she must have spent a lot of time thinking. The last time I had seen her, she had hated me. Or at least, she had wanted to.

"You've been asleep for almost two months." She closed her eyes again, and an impressive surge of nerves moved in my stomach.

"And I'm still tired." I chuckled mildly.

"Well, your body might have been running around without you." She sent me a withering look.

"Very funny, Shuuichi." I wondered, if I wasn't so old, would I blush whenever she said that name? "Seriously though, why do I feel like someone took out my spine and flayed me with it."

My eyebrows rose.

"Your demon puts up a good fight." Her face paled even more, if that was possible

"I… oh." The silence was long, and then she let out a long breath. "Can we maybe go get this fixed." Her voice was quieter. "I think I'm bleeding."

My eyebrows furrowed, and I reached forward, pulling her up into a sitting position. She hissed and clutched at my shirt.

"Don't fall asleep." I warned, and then grabbed her legs and stood fluidly. She sucked in air through her nose, looking a little green. "Ha… sorry." She just shook her head.

I didn't wait, I just took off.

—

"Alright, that stopped the bleeding." Yukina said, wiping off her hands.

"Thank you so much." Eva said, sending her a bright smile. Everyone was still so shocked. She seemed so normal, but I could see the strain in her movement. I wondered how she was staying in control.

Looking at Kurama, I could tell that he didn't know either. There was a knock on the door and I stood, opening it. Koenma's tall form and Botan's cheerful smile were right outside. He nodded at me slowly on his way in, as if uncertain of how to treat me.

Well, I didn't blame him. I wouldn't know how to treat me either. Well, that's a lie. I did think it was annoying how he kept glancing at me like I was going to stab someone, but my irritations were beside the point. Eva was finally with the group again, and that made everything that much better.

Kurama seemed to have a weight off his back too. I usually thought of him as very lofty and unconnected, but with her he seemed human. There was just an air about him that wasn't certain or confident. He smiled more, too.

I expected that there would be a bit of a dark aura to her, but instead she seemed to always be smiling, and she was very quiet. Something had changed in the time that she had been gone. I wondered what could have happened to cause the change. She tried so much harder to love people, whereas before there was anger that surrounded her all the time.

Uncertainty, sadness, regret, it was still there, but it was used to learn from, not to suffer from. I couldn't pick out the other thing that seemed different. Perhaps it was that there was a peacefulness to her. Something that had been destroying her wasn't anymore. I could have been wrong though.

"Do you want me to heal the scar?" She asked. Eva gave her a long look and then shook her head.

"I think I'll keep it." The woman nodded and the two seemed to have reached an understanding. The rest of us were not quite the same way.

"What?! Why?" I asked. She glanced at me, and that's when I realized the change.

"To remind me." She didn't add anything more, but I saw that weight. She wasn't an innocent person, and hadn't been for a very long time, but the difference was that she had accepted her failures. That took a lot more courage then simply feeling bad.

"Oh, Koenma, to what do we owe the pleasure."

Even though the room was huge, it was beginning to feel a bit cramped. There were at least eight people in there. I could only imagine how the sick girl had to feel. Glancing over, I saw her looking around and looking very content. Apparently no imagination was necessary on my part.

"Our new resident is a potential danger." Kurama visibly bristled, and I felt the rest of them shift as well. Apparently Koenma picked up on the sudden anger and changed his tone some. "The council decided, it's not my choice. She needs to have her head checked if she's going to stay."

Man, it must really suck to always have to be the bringer of bad news. His expression said everything that needed to be said. He always had to deliver the message of the council, and had delivered so much bad news that it didn't even bother him anymore.

He did need the support of that room to get anything done, though.

"Hiei?" Kurama asked. I looked behind me and jumped. He had stayed and I still wasn't used to not being constantly aware of his presence.

"Move, idiots." He then walked over. Eva looked up at him and sighed. "Relax." She closed her eyes and seemed to fall into some kind of meditation. I wished that I could have meditated so easily.

There was an ambient glow from Hiei's forehead that told me that she was having her memories checked by the jagan. The two were still for about thirty seconds and then Hiei opened his eyes, looking more then a bit horrified.

"She's safe." He said, and I was glad that Koenma couldn't see his expression. The guy seemed relieved.

"Are you certain." He cleared the horror away and turned around.

"Are you doubting me?" The chair shook his head and then smiled and waved, leaving the room. Pressure lifted, I let out the breath I didn't even know I had been holding.

"It's nice of you to cover for me, but why lie?" That childish voice asked. Hiei didn't answer, and Kurama just shook his head. Genkai snorted.

"I'm lost." I whispered to Kuwabara. He glanced at me and shrugged.

"Me too." Naturally.

—

I was dozing quietly. I had been sleepy just all the time. No matter what I did, I was tired. I could probably have had seven cups of coffee and still taken a nap with ease. It was probably because of the energy that it took to stay in control though.

The demon was not happy that it was back in my head and my head only. I kind of wanted to rub it in Lasciel's face, but I was the bigger person. She might have been a total bitch, but I was not.

I did kind of feel bad for Hiei, though. Having to look through my head was not a very pleasant experience. Not only was Lasciel very loud about how she felt about the intrusion, but there was a huge backlog of nightmares and information that didn't make sense to deal with too.

I was thankful that he had been willing to cover for my obvious imbalance though. That had been at the cost of his reputation potentially. I was a bit worried about what he was going to expect out of it though. He didn't strike me as a very giving person, or a very nice one for that matter.

I had only met him once or twice though, so my first impression might have just been bad. I mean, I had done that with Shuuichi. My impression had been that he was going to kill me for weeks before I accepted that he meant me no harm.

I was far less skittish after everything that had happened to me though, so at least there was that.

My mind wandered back to what my mother had said, her whole story. There was someone that I had to be afraid of, or at least wary of, but the warning was useless if I didn't know who it was. Blinking away sleepiness, I slowly emerged from bed and went to go find Shuuichi. I had more then a few questions that I needed to ask him.

—

"Apparently the name Yoko means something to you." I said bluntly. I didn't feel like beating around the bush. Two shocked eyes jumped to my face and I had to fight the urge to blush.

"Where did you hear that?" My lips pursed, so my mother hadn't been lying.

"That's a secret. Why? What is it?" The tall man who I had been certain I was never going to see again reached up and scratched the back of his neck.

"It's my name." I raised an eyebrow. "My other name, I mean." Oh no. "You see, I wasn't always human."

I sighed.

"Naturally." I said, mildly sarcastic. With the group that I hung around with though, it was unusual to be normal. I mean, I harbored a fallen angel who may or may not have been from another universe, Hiei was a fire demon, Yukina was basically a walking icicle, Genkai was some weird hag with superpowers who taught a younger, more headstrong idiot to have superpowers who eventually transformed into a demon and… do I really need to continue? So you see, the fact that Shuuichi apparently wasn't human did not come as a surprise.

If anything I expected it. I had just wanted proof that my mother had not been lying. But if she hadn't been…

"You're… taking this better then I thought you would." That was surprisingly straightforward. I frowned, it wasn't really in his character. He had always kept things from me, being too tight-lipped for his own good. He was being honest. It was nice.

"Shuuichi, Kurama, Yoko, whatever you go by, I'm a little different then I was a few months ago." I thought about hearing his story, but then decided that I should tell him a little bit about why I was so willing to accept things. "You know, it's dark inside of your head. It's dark and it's cold and it's lonely." That gaze wasn't pitying.

I didn't really expect it to be. Being a damsel isn't a way to reach Shuuichi. He doesn't have an understanding of it. Oh, he'll pretend, but he didn't bother, not with me, because he knew that I could see through it.

"And since you're basically dead, you start to drift. And then you start to forget. You forget that you existed once, and you forget that once upon a time… you weren't always alone." My voice got smaller and it felt like I was so far away from everyone. There were so many things that needed to get done, and these people all had lives, and I was just hanging around the edge, trying to be part of all the important things, and yet I couldn't seem to do so.

Crossing my arms, I pulled my knees close.

"You feel so small, and even if you fight with all of your might, you still can't get out. You don't exist anymore… and maybe you never did." I remembered my mother's words. "You get visited by people who shouldn't exist. My mother came, Shuuichi." He was observing me coolly, and I couldn't really seem to get a read on what he thought of anything.

I stood and walked up to him, looking up at him. My eyebrows were furrowed as I searched his face.

"You of all people should know how it feels to be out of place." I finally said, and his eyes did widen at that. "Yeah, she told me. She told me everything she knew. All of the prophecies, and things that happened ten years ago and how I don't belong here." My shoulders shrank, and I looked down, feeling tears come to my eyes.

"I was supposed to save you." I whispered, biting my lip and feeling so frustrated at myself. "But I don't know how!" I finally cried and pressed my hands to my face, leaning against him.

He sucked in a breath and put his hands on my shoulders. It was as if I had flipped a switch. Kneeling, he peered up at my face.

"Save me. From what?" He really, truly seemed flabbergasted by what I was saying. I shook with anger and frustration and confusion.

"Myself!" I finally yelled. "Of course Lasciel picked me on purpose!"

Life is chaos, and you are only allotted a particular amount of time to decide where you fit into it. Will you try to understand the scope of it all, or will you allow yourself to be swept away, or will try to reach out and grab your life by the reigns?

It's your choice, and I wasn't going to destroy my freedom a second time.

"What?" I sighed heavily and then shook my head. I wasn't supposed to tell the whole story, or else nothing was going to work out the way that it was supposed to. My mother had told me what I needed to do, generally speaking, and given the me the tools to do it. I just had to put some faith in her.

I looked up at him and then just felt very tired.

"Shuuichi, is there a kitchen here?" I asked, changing the subject.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, why?"

"Because I want food, that's why."

He sighed.

"Right. Of course, why did I ask?" I laughed, and then grabbed his arm.

"Come on, come on, I haven't eaten in months!"

So we went down the halls, Shuuichi going much too slowly for my liking, and then finally arrived at one of the biggest, coolest kitchens that I had ever seen.

"This place is huge!" I exclaimed, running around. It was truly difficult not to be absolutely fascinated, and I didn't want to be serious or afraid anymore, I just wanted to enjoy everything around me.

"Oh, you're up!" Angela looked up from the counter and sent a tentative smile my way. I took a long look at the one-armed woman, sizing her up, and it clicked.

"You're the dragon-lady, and he's the dragon-guy, right?" I asked. Hiei looked up and I realized that if he had looked through all of my memories, then he had seen everything. Even the things that he hadn't been supposed to see.

Instead of pointing it out, he just nodded at me. I shivered. He knew what we needed to do, what I needed to do, and he just nodded and accepted it.

He either had nerves of steel, or was just really stupid. It was hard to tell with Hiei.

I was really tired, to be honest. Tired, stressed and overwhelmed with more responsibility then I thought that I could handle, but that didn't let me off the hook. I still had to stay strong. I was seeing all of the people that I had given up on seeing again, besides, my duties had been entrusted to me by my mother, and that mattered more to me then any amount of stress.

Watching the two across the room as Shuuichi cooked, I began to wonder why they were always together. The blonde girl, Angela, never touched Hiei, nor did he really look at her. He glanced around, seeming awfully bored, and she was just sort of watching me with this peeked interest, like she was waiting for me to do a backflip or turn into a cat.

I didn't really know what to think of that.

The odd part was that even though they were doing different things and not communicating at all, when one shifted, the other would, and there was this odd sense that they were having a conversation and I didn't know why.

I had only seen either of them perhaps a handful of times and Hiei had been really mean mostly, while Angela had been nice, but I hadn't appreciated it before then.

"So, how are you feeling?" The blonde finally asked, her voice deeper and smoother then I remembered. I blinked and tried to put on my best smile. Smiling a lot still felt odd. It stretched my face and the muscles in my cheeks would begin to hurt quickly. I was kind of scared that my face would get stuck like that or something, kind of like when your parents warn you about going cross-eyed, though I sometimes wonder if they don't do that just to keep you from freaking people out in public.

"Sleep is always nice." This stupid grin spread across her face at that and I knew that she understood exactly what I was talking about. "I always wake up with headaches for whatever reason, though." She sighed heavily and that was when I decided that I really liked her.

Leaning forward in the warm light of the kitchen, she set her chin on her only hand.

"That really is one heck of a scar." Glancing down, I realized that my shoulder was exposed because of the huge shirt I was wearing. The torn, warped skin didn't look nice, but there was this air to it that I didn't mind.

It felt like a sign that everything I had gone through hadn't been my imagination. It had all truly happened, which did seem very surreal considering the circumstances.

"I kind of like it." I finally said. "Though yours is better." I glanced at her arm and she kind of turned and furrowed her eyebrows before giving me a funny look

"I never thought of it that way." Then she turned to Hiei, who looked like he was actually going to die of boredom. "It's like an epic battle-scar."

He raised an eyebrow and she just rolled her eyes and looked back at me. I noticed that lingering look that stayed on her face and stump though. There was some history about that arm between them and some part of me really wanted to know the story, the other part just wished that I could go back to bed.

"What are we having anyway?" I asked Shuuichi, glancing behind me. A particularly heavenly smell was permeating the whole room and I just couldn't quite place it. He glanced at me, as if debating whether or not her felt like telling me, but someone else beat me to it.

"It's that human concoction called spaghetti." My eyes widened. I took in a long, deep breath.

"Oh my God, I love spaghetti." If my eyes had suddenly dilated because of my deep passion for food, it would not have surprised me. Even though I was thin and short, I ate like a pig, nobody could understand why I had never grown more or gotten fat. I didn't have a super-speedy metabolism either, it was more like I just had a fourth dimension for a stomach, or a black hole, it was fairly difficult to tell which in some cases.

Another body appeared behind me, leaning over my shoulder.

"It smells fantastic." I jumped slightly and then the biggest shit-eating grin grew on my face.

"I only share with those who eat as much as I do." Angela's deep blue eyes shifted down to mine, holding a mischievous sparkle in them.

"Is that a challenge, Ms. Eva?" How she remembered my name was beyond me, but then I realized that she had been traveling with Shuuichi for a while if she was here, especially if he would let her eat his cooking, so it kind of made sense in that context.

"I would say that it is." I said, and that grin grew on her face, and we just kind of stood there, grinning evilly at each other until the dark presence of the cook became apparent.

"You're in my way." He said, almost whispering. We both squealed and ran over to the counter, getting away from the boiling water and heavenly smells, though they were still very strong ten feet away. Glancing at the girl hiding behind the counter beside me we both burst into a fit of giggles, and for the first time in a long time I felt very normal.

I mean, admittedly, I was hanging around a few demons in another dimension cackling about spaghetti sporting a huge battle-scar, but other then that I felt very normal.

"Is the food almost ready?" I asked, and the tall, cooking red-head sighed and glanced to the ceiling. I did too, just to make sure that nothing was there that I should know about.

There wasn't anything. He was just annoyed.

"For the thirteenth time, a few more minutes." I leaned over and slid out of my chair and onto the floor.

"But I want food now!" I whined and Angela laughed at me. Hiei just snorted like I was some kind of retarded cat. Admittedly, he wasn't so far from the truth. I just rolled around some and then got grossed out because the floor had stuff on it, so then I dusted myself off and by then, food was on the table. I threw my hands up and cheered, looking around for a plate and a fork.

I was going to eat so much food.

—

So, it turns out that even though the steaming spaghetti, which had arrived on our plates in mountains of succulent, gleaming noodles woven together and dyed with red sauce, the meatballs a perfect decoration and a tiny sprig of green atop just for aesthetic purposes, had been so carefully made, and even though the both of us truly had been hungry enough to inhale just about anything that neared the danger zone of our mouths, months of unusual habits and mild starvation catches up with you.

Neither of us could eat even half as much food as we thought we would. Apparently Lasciel eats like some sort of bird because I had only begun my quest into the dark depths of the spaghetti mountain before beginning to feel rather ill and finally throwing in the fork and admitting that I couldn't inhale another bite.

My frustration was not only my own however, for Angela had gone through something very similar and neither of us could make it very far before going into a lull and only picking before finally nodding to our failure and halting the deep dive into the food though.

"Oh God, that was satisfying." Angela groaned, and I hummed in agreement, worried that if I opened my mouth I would either burp or hurl and neither one sounded very pleasant. Especially if I brought into consideration the presence of the other people in the room.

Shuuichi was just sort of shaking his head at me and Hiei just looked kind of ill. Odd, I wouldn't have pegged as the type to have a weak stomach, or even the type who would be disgusted by vulgarity. Or maybe he just wasn't certain where we were putting all of the food. Glancing at my mostly-full plate, I thought about attempting to finish (wasting such delicious sustenance seemed like a horrible thing to do), but just the thought of eating was making my stomach cringe and the smell was beginning to make my head spin in an unpleasant fashion.

"I feel sick." I finally answered. Angela snorted and nodded weakly as we both lolled in our seats.

"What time is it?"

"Like eleven at night."

"Oh God, I'm never going to wake up."

She just laughed and neither of us even tried to move. The two men were being surprisingly patient with us, which I was glad for. I was worried about moving, but I kind of wanted to get away from the smell of food as well.

"Want to go chill out in my room." Tired, ocean eyes landed and me and then they closed and Angela leaned back again, raising one arm in a tired 'hoorah' fashion.

"Why not." It was more of a statement then a question though.

—

After finding our way through the maze of hallways (Hiei led us, well, Hiei and Shuuichi, or should I call him Kurama, oh who cares) and returning to my temporary headquarters, I was surprised to find that the two men actually did look awfully tired, but were sticking around.

I didn't understand why though until I thought about it for a minute, then it hit me, like a rock had fallen out of a tree and hit me in the head, blood everywhere, making a huge mess — where was I going with that? Anyway, the reason. The reason was that they were worried about us disappearing if they left.

It was kind of sweet, really. Hiei didn't care about me, but he was protective of Angela for whatever reason. Shuuichi. Well, it was hard to tell with him. Where Hiei looked like some kind of bodyguard, my red-head (mine?) was just chilling out. Perhaps he was the sassy gay friend of the sleepover.

Yes, that was it.

I whispered this comment to Angela.

The other two still heard it.

This fact was funnier to me then it should have been.

"Guys, we're having an all-out sleepover here." I commented, and Angela sagely nodded. They seemed confused, so I continued. "So unless you plan on getting into some tiny shorts and revealing shirts and spilling all of your dirty secrets, I highly suggest you hang around in another room."

That got them out in a hurry. The second they were gone, we both let out a breath, the tension leaving our shoulders.

"It creeps me out when he glares at me like that." I said, meaning Hiei. Angela shot me a look.

"Really? Those green peepers are what freak me out. How do you not feel inferior _all the time_?"

"I don't think you understand." I said, and beckoned her forward as if I was going to share a very important piece of information. "I do always feel inferior."

She laughed and we both laughed for a minute or two, then, finally, the things to laugh about died out and unlike what I had said to the two men we had kicked out, we never got into tiny shorts, we never found better shirts, neither of us felt like talking about something as serious as secrets and after our little bout of stupid giggling, the food caught up with the both of us and then we collapsed into bed.

I didn't know about Angela, but I slept better then I had in a while, even if neither of us did wake up until very late the next morning.

We had been through a lot, give us a break.

Sleeping is sacred.

Sacred I tell you.

"No." I said as someone pushed at my shoulder. The fingers were too cold and it was giving me goosebumps. Before long, I would be lucky if the chill didn't wake me up.

"Rise and shine, quests don't wait." There was a few seconds of silence after that was said near my ear. My eyes cracked open and I stared into my pillow.

"Adventures are for chumps." There was a snort and then cold fingers were removed. I sighed, thinking that perhaps I had been left alone. I spoke too soon though.

"Good…" That was the warning and I should have leapt from bed squealing at that point. "Morning!"

"Ah! Get off me!" I squawked, flailing under the awkward weight of the body that had descended onto me.

"Get up!"

"Can't, can't breathe." I went limp. "So dead. All the dead." The weight moved.

"There, I'm off."

I sucked in a huge breath and sat up.

"Oh good, you're heavy!" Eva narrowed her eyes at me. Her slight build was nothing to shake a stick at after all and we both knew it. Oddly enough, even though I had barely know Eva for more then a few days really, it felt like I had known her for much, much longer. Why was that, though?

"Yeah, get dressed, we can't laze around any longer." She said, and even though she simply sounded a bit annoyed, I could see worry in her eyes and the her fidgety movements told me how on edge she was.

Seeing that, I began to move. There was no light coming through the windows yet, and Botan was hanging by the door, continuously glancing at her wrist.

The gleaming watch told me that we were in fact on a time constraint.

"Can I at least get a quick shower?" Eva freezing blue eyes told me that the answer was clearly no and she shook her head sadly. I then noticed that she looked quite disheveled as well. Throwing on my t-shirt and shorts, I stood, ready to go do whatever it was we were running off to find.

"What did I miss?" I asked quietly as we hurried down the stone hallways, silence reigning in those early morning hours. The bags under her eyes were telling, and I really began to wonder just what she had been through to keep her from sleeping.

I had never seen her well-rested and she always seemed to be perpetually exhausted.

"The others are waiting for us downstairs." She finally said, as if it was hard for her to get the words out. My head tilted slightly.

"Why the sudden rush?"

Seconds ticked past where she was quiet and then she finally closed her eyes and sighed.

"Genkai was taken by the Old Ones, the group that Lasciel led." She finally answered, the words slightly forced. "So was Yukina." Her tone got harsher, but the words even quieter.

I sucked in slightly, gasping only a bit.

"They seem to have some way of stopping Hiei from finding them. He can't seem to use his Jagan correctly." I blinked and then rooted around in my head a bit, unsticking it enough to remember how to contact him via telepathy.

_Hiei?_ The irritated answer came almost immediately, but I would almost claim that he was relieved. I was still somewhat amazed that he talked to me even without his life hanging on the balance of my own.

_What? I'm kind of busy._ He sounded rather strained and I wondered what he was trying to do that would push his concentration so much.

_Are you okay?_ He sighed and then, basically, hung up. I pursed my lips, taking back my previous thought. It was rare that he was that rude and I was really beginning to lost track of what was going on.

What had I missed, there had been a horrid few weeks spent in a dark cell while searching for the girl forging quickly down the hallway in front of me, there was me getting out and getting an odd warning from the queen of the winter court of the fae (which meant that it had to have been a big deal) and then there was that same girl suddenly appearing and then Eva emerging triumphant (sort of) in control of her body.

Then I'd eaten a shitload of spaghetti and felt quite sick. Something had been up with the people around me though, that was true. They had all been on edge about something, especially Eva and Hiei.

That was weird.

Normally it was my name paired with his.

I felt a rare flash of something in my heart, but ignored it because there were more important things to worry about.

Like Cute. I suddenly remembered exactly what I had been doing before Eva turned the castle upside-down for a few days. I couldn't stop to focus though, I couldn't meditate, I hadn't been able to learn with Hiei.

How had all of those thoughts slipped my mind? I wasn't sure, but they had and that was the important part.

_Hiei._ I said, this time he didn't answer at all and suddenly I realized how alone I felt. It was cold and reminded me of how I had felt all of those months before. A shiver ran over my shoulders and I felt kind of nauseous. _Cute?_

There was no answer there either. I began to close in on myself, my shoulders hunching in the early morning air, and head bowing toward the floor, picking up on the hazy details of the twilight-colored rocks.

Then a sense of frustration grew in my stomach. I didn't want to give up on these things that I wanted. To be honest, it was true that I wasn't soul-bonded with Hiei anymore. It meant that if I liked him, I could do so without feeling like someone had told me to.

The thought that I could like someone else scared me. The thought that I had a choice was foreign. The thought that I had to be taught how to reach Cute scared me. All of these thoughts did, but I wasn't going to let them control me.

I would figure out how to do it myself if I had to. I would figure out what was up with the only person that had cared. I would make my own choices about my life. I had been forgiven and Eva had been located, I was off the hook if I wanted to leave.

I didn't have to be around other people all the time. I could go and find my own home if I wanted to.

I'm not going to lie and tell you that I loved everyone there enough to decide that I would stay without even thinking about my choices. The thought of freedom from all of the responsibility and stress was a very attractive idea, especially if my biggest reason for staying was going to be a cold-hearted jerk as per usual.

I wasn't the type to be happy with giving and never getting anything back. I had already gone through one back relationship, why would I be happy with two? What part of that even made the slightest inkling of sense? None of it. I wouldn't have been happy with that and as we approached the door, I really thought about it. I could just book it and never see these people again.

I had gotten my dragon, my freedom, my body and my mind back under my own wings. It was my right to do whatever I wanted. Eva had been retrieved, even if I hadn't really had to put in that much to do so. It was the thought that mattered there.

I flexed the dry fingers of my left hand and idly rolled my right shoulder, then ran my thumb along the hilt of my sword. It was warm under my fingers, which was kind of nice, because it was chilly enough to raise goosebumps on my exposed skin.

I mean, most of it was exposed. I covered up, but clothing felt very restrictive, so I didn't like wearing a lot of it most of the time. Besides, it used to be that my clothes would get destroyed by stray bits of magic if I wasn't careful enough, so my habits were rather understandable if you thought about it in that context.

"Angela?" Eva asked, and I realized that I had stopped about ten feet away from the door and had probably been staring at it for nearly a minute. Slowly tearing my gaze off, I jumped slightly and then focused in on Eva's face that was shrouded in the dim light.

"Yeah?"

She chewed on her next words.

"You are free to leave, I suppose." She said, looking behind her. I nearly winced, realizing that she had picked up on what I had been thinking about. It was hard to truly feel bad though, because I would have had to mention it sooner or later.

Besides, as I have pointed out many times over, I am not a nice person. I'm not even a kind of friendly person. I'm cruel, barbaric, loud and masculine, closer to handsome then pretty, closer to animal then human being. At some point, I had stopped being empathetic and kind and understanding, those words turned into anger, vengefulness and a deep sense of loneliness.

I was all alone in a world full of things that were out to get me. Or at least, that was how I had been before I had met Genkai and Hiei, and Yuusuke and Kuwabara, Eva and Yukina and Botan and Kurama, the weight of the people that had shown faith in me was heavy, but one stood out above all the others.

Genkai.

She had been taken by Eva's group.

As much as everyone else had failed me, she had only gone out of her way to kick the life back in me and pull me back onto my feet every time I collapsed to the ground, certain that I couldn't go any farther.

She pushed and prodded and cared more then anyone else ever had. That was something that meant more then almost anything else.

I wasn't tied down anymore, but I owed her at least enough of my time to go and help. But after that I was gone, I decided. After I knew that she was safe, I was done. I did care a lot about everyone, but that wasn't exactly returned.

I was that sore thumb, the third wheel, the weak link, the weight and the annoyance. This wasn't going to change. I was suddenly going to be accepted no matter what I did. I was simply weaker, more odd and much less in control.

It was hard to tell when I was finally going to snap under all of the pressure, and now that some of it had been lifted, I became truly aware of how heavy it had been. One wrong move and I was back in the frying pan.

One bad choice and bam, into the fire. I didn't want to lose the freedom that I had needed to fight so hard to get. I couldn't bear to lose it, so my decision was made.

I would help find and save Genkai, then I would leave no matter what happened.

"I know."

"Will you?" She asked, and I could see how much it would hurt her in her eyes. Not that I really cared very much about it all of a sudden.

At first, I had imagined that I could become friends with her and my fate wouldn't be so bad and perhaps one day I would find peace in it. Now I had the choice.

"Not yet." I stated honestly.

She just nodded at that.

My eyes snapped open as I started in shock. My dreams had been very odd, or perhaps the word would be disturbing. The dreams were back. I could never seem to get away from them and a touch to my face told me that my eyes had taken the toll, the bags were worse then ever before because I had started to get used to not having horrid dreams and then they had just returned with a vengeance.

I slid out of the large bed and padded across the stone floor, shivering almost violently at how cold it was. It was probably winter back in Human World. That wouldn't have surprised me anyway. It was always winter somewhere after all.

Stumbling into the hall, I tried to remember where the kitchen was, or maybe the bathroom, or maybe just potential clothing, the council? There were so many things that I needed to do, but after debating with myself, I decided that breakfast was the most important, because no day was started unless breakfast was involved.

Or at least, that was the case if you were me.

Running a hand through my long, black hair, I realized that it was sticking up every which way, but somehow I just didn't care. The shirt I was wearing was also big enough to be sliding everywhere, but not quite large enough to slide down my shoulder and look actually attractive or something, I probably looked like a complete retard actually.

"Would be my luck." I muttered to myself, retracing the footsteps I had taken in those past few days. It had been nearly a week since the spaghetti incident, and I knew that I was running out of time.

I was now avoiding the problem, and no one knew where Genkai was, and I hadn't seen much of Angela since that day. She seemed to be avoiding everyone and deep in thought nearly all the time. It was rather odd, actually.

My feet were beginning to go numb from the cold, but I was basically ignoring it at that point, just trying to find my way through the huge castle that I was in. It was oddly well-taken-care-of and I was certain that I probably had Valaria and Melinda to thank for that. They seemed to be the real heads of the place.

"Now, if I were food, where would I be?" I murmured aloud, beginning to wander rather then search. It was actually becoming a waste of time, but even as I thought that, I caught the scent of sugar in the air and took a long sniff, then turned in that direction, heading the other way. The closer I got, the more I picked up on the other scents inside, such as cinnamon and bread and that's when I started praying for cinnamon rolls.

I hadn't had those in years. They were the best breakfast food. Right next to everything else that involved sugar and baking and potential shots of crack.

No, really, hear me out. That stuff was too addicting not to have some seriously questionable substances in it.

I opened a door and the delicious smells hit me like a wall, warmth billowing out of the room that I had just infringed upon into the hall. I slid in and shut the door behind me, realizing that my fantastic nose had led me right to the kitchen.

"If those are cinnamon rolls, then take me." I stated without emotion, going to sit at the bar-counter more comfortably. The woman doing the cooking laughed and shook her head before turning to look at me.

"I don't know about that, but this is supposed the breakfast of the ages. Food was literally everywhere. It covered most of the available surfaces and that room wasn't even the main kitchen. Suddenly, I was rather glad that I hadn't found it.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. The blue-haired woman, Yukina, blinked, and her smile grew a bit.

"The men are heading out today to go and find something sent to them in a message from Genkai." And I knew. I knew without her telling me that what they were going to go find was dangerous, and I also knew, without a doubt, that the gift had been discovered in this timeline.

Or perhaps it had already been discovered and they had lost it.

"What are they looking for?" I asked, deciding that I might as well, because I would never learn anything otherwise.

"A weapon, of sorts." I almost wanted to cry and yell out my protest, but I just chose not to say anything at all and quietly slid from my stool.

"Well, I guess I'll go get ready for this 'breakfast of the ages' then." She nodded politely and I hurried from the room, going and finding my own quarters and then getting into a hot shower. I needed time to think. And space.

I was awoken by the smell of food, and it certainly did bring me out of my stupor in a hurry.

"Oh God, where's the shower. I can't wait, now." I said, nearly falling out of bed as I rolled hurriedly to my feet and retrieved clothing and a towel before beginning the hike to the bathrooms. They were communal bathrooms, and as much as it made me rather uncomfortable to bathe in front of others, my reaction had been worlds better then Eva's. She nearly died of a heart attack and it took a lot of cajoling on my part to get her to even go near the baths.

They were gender-separate because, hey, Demons have limits too. For this I was immensely grateful.

The cold air nipped at my skin and I sighed in relief as I entered the steam filled bathroom, feeling warmer already. There was gentle humming from inside and I realized that I must have gotten up late or something, because normally the place was filled. Well, I may have also gotten up early, but the position of the sun disagreed with me on that. No matter where you were, the sun still set.

"Hello?" I called out. The quiet humming stopped, and then there was a splashing noise from the area of the tub.

"Angela?" A high voice asked, a bit muffled because of the wall separating the door from a view of the goings-on inside the bath.

"That's my name." I answered, and then shuffled forward, rounding the corner to where I could drop off my things and undress. Eva was floating about in the bath, her pink toes sticking out of the water. "Oh, hey. The food?"

I was asking about what had gotten her up and she apparently got it, because she nodded.

"It smelled really good."

"Yes, it did."

I made quick work of my pajamas and then slipped into the hot water with a content sigh, submerging right up to my nose. Bubbles popped up in front of me and exploded across the surface of the water. A sigh sounded from where Eva was.

"So, this is the first time I've really been awake to meet you." She said. It was odd, I still got this weird sense of Deja Vu, like I'd met her before, but I didn't feel the need to mention the odd feeling. I surfaced far enough to take a breath and speak.

"True. Hi, nice to meet you." I stated, and then slid back under, still feeling rather chilly from my trek to the room. I was already feeling cleaner. "Just a sec." I added and then dunked under, pushing away from the wall and swimming around for a minute before popping back up, feeling far more refreshed.

"Nice, isn't it?" She pointed out. I nodded, smiling.

"Yeah, it feels great." A mildly awkward silence ensued.

"So apparently the guys are going on some quest to find some weapon without us." She said blandly, as if it wasn't even interesting, I looked up quickly, noting that her freezing, startling blue eyes were watching me for some sort of reaction. My expression darkened.

"Are they now?" She nodded, and I made a side-note that she had very high cheekbones.

"Yes." She hesitated, and I wondered what else she was going to say. "And we really need to find a way to go with them." She added, sounded a bit uncertain, a bit reluctant to say so. As much as I agreed with her, I could tell that she wasn't adventurous like I was, she looked more like she just wanted to stay at the castle, or back at Genkai's and sleep or something.

"And why is that?" She huffed and looked frustrated, as if wanting to say something, but unable to do so, or unable to frame her thoughts.

"Because of… reasons." I raised an eyebrow a high as it could go and made certain that my expression was the picture of doubt. "We have to, because we're both involved in the prophecy." She finally spat, and that word immediately rang a bell. My eyes widened.

"You don't happen to be referring to the dragon prophecy by any chance, are you?" Her eyes widened and she gasped.

"How do you know about that?" She seemed almost like she was panicking, as if my knowledge of the words were her mistake and the entire world was going to fall apart just because I had guessed correctly.

"The winter queen came and warned me about a prophecy, that one, but I don't know any more then that." My eyes narrowed. "Why? What do you know?"

"Back off." She said, shrinking into herself, and I realized that at some point I had risen to my feet and begun advancing towards her. I didn't exactly understand how I was supposed to be intimidating though. I was missing an arm, and not wearing any clothing, if anything I probably would have laughed.

Eva didn't seem to be of the same opinion though, so I returned to floating in the water and drifted backward, apologizing. She sighed.

"It's… fine. I'm just on edge is all." She paused and took a deep breath. "The Dragon Prophecy is a really old riddle, or story, honestly. No one really knows exactly what it was either, because it was about the future obviously, but it somehow involves the Old Ones and you and me."

I swam backward.

"Wait, wait, wait, how does that involve anyone we know?" I asked, feeling really lost, and very overwhelmed by what I thought she was implying.

"I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think its like a really old blood feud, and something went wrong at some point, and the two warring factions were put far apart, somehow, and when they made their way back together they weren't fighting anymore." She seemed to be staring at the water, as if searching for the answers in it. "Of course, this seemed impossible at the time, so, the prophecy, well, warning, was just kind of ignored, but the ones who ignored it were wrong."

My head tipped slightly to the side.

"How were they wrong, I don't see how this applies." I said, and really did feel that I was just missing something obvious and then everything would click when I understood it.

"Angels and Demons have been fighting almost as long as time." She said, and my eyes widened. "But at some point, they got separated, and when they came back together, they had to make agreements and sort of, get along, I guess. Spirit World and Demon World aren't at war, not anymore. The humans were sort of species that nobody expected, and we changed things, but there was a faction of angels that didn't agree, that didn't want peace, that wouldn't accept the demons." It all began to fall into place. "Those were the Old Ones."

"Oh."

"Oh is right."

"So, how do we factor into this?" I asked, trying to clarify the last piece that I didn't understand.

"Well, the Old Ones keep true peace from happening, but they are immortal, and practically unbeatable, so no one has ever been able to keep them from destroying peace whenever the worlds grow close to it. That is — until now." And then she went on to say a few lines.

'_Beware, for I have spoken against this plan._

_For some powers are not meant to be used._

_All secrets will out,_

_And things forgotten with the passage of time,_

_Will resurface under a temptress,_

_When the nameless one receives a name._'

That's the prophecy."

I didn't really understand it though, because it was wordy.

"What is it supposed to mean?" I asked.

"The plan was to seal something, some sort of weapon, that could cause untold destruction if used. A seer, at the time, saw that it should have been destroyed, but no one believed that anyone would ever use it, or find it (because it was a well-kept secret). The only way that it could have been found is if a dragon is born that receives no name and chooses its companion in a human, which was unheard of. That is —"

"Until I named Cute." Eva sighed. "Which I'm not going to question how you know about." She just nodded thankfulness for because I figured that she probably just couldn't tell me.

"Thanks, anyway, there was another part to finding it. An angel had to fall from grace, and become a demon, another thing that didn't seem possible. Well, some did. Including one that later got named _The Temptress_. A fallen angel should eventually disappear, but the way around it is to find a suitable body to take over." I began to see where everything was going. "Mine."

And everything fell into place. Eva seemed to be fighting off a headache. My heart suddenly dropped to my feet.

"And the guys are leaving to go look for something that 'Genkai' sent, but…" I seemed to point out something that even Eva herself hadn't thought of.

"But it may have been sent by the Old Ones so that they could remove the only two who could stop the prophecy from happening."

"Woah, what?" I had missed that part about stopping the prophecy. She huffed, seeming to be getting frustrated by my lack of knowledge, or her own lack of teaching skill, I was having a hard time picking up on which.

We were both hurrying out of the bath to dry ourselves off and she answered me between pulling on a shirt and pants.

"Well, the things that were going to happen were only going to happen if we existed and did what we did, but really, it's a prophecy. Basically, this was going to happen anyway. Someone eventually would have found a way around whatever seal was being used to stop them and would have probably started a huge war and destroyed the world." She winced at that, not that I could understand why. "As much as we are a sign of impending doom, we are also the hope. I am trapping the leader of the Old Ones and you have the only dragon powerful enough to stop them."

My eyebrows furrowed.

"Cute wasn't that powerful." Eva's eyes clouded with confusion and she paused halfway through pulling her hair into a ponytail. "It wasn't that hard to defeat her."

She seemed to be attempting to mull over that fact, but eventually shook her head.

"I don't know everything. Perhaps I was wrong about my assumption on what the dragon is for, but regardless, you have to figure out a way to get Hiei to teach you how to unlock her and we have to figure out a way to let them bring us."

I scratched my head in irritation. My head was already beginning to hurt just at the thought of that argument.

"But wait, why doesn't Hiei already know all of this?" I asked. Eva glanced away from my eyes and bit her lip.

"I can't answer that."

I stopped walking and she looked behind her, confused as to why I wasn't feeling the same rush that she was, because let's be clear, we were in a rush. There was potential world-ending problems going on, but I couldn't just accept that hole in her story without explanation.

She groaned.

"I really can't say." My stubborn nature showed through in that moment. "Fine, those memories are blocked, but that's all I can say." She looked like she was about to bite her own tongue off after spitting that out, but it didn't matter to me.

I nodded and then finished getting dressed, hopping to pull on my shoes and heading toward the door with her.

"I am really not looking forward to this argument."

The short girl seemed to wilt slightly and she sighed heavily as we emerged out of the bathroom and into the cooler air of the hallway.

"No kidding."

Our feet pounded along the hallway and my wet hair was stuck to my face. We were following the scent of food, figuring that we would probably find who were looking for wherever the feast was being held. As we went to pass our rooms, my eyes landed on Valaria and Melinda and I hurried up to them, feeling rather out of breath.

"Can you lead us to Kurama and Hiei and Yuusuke and Kuwabara, please?" I asked, my dark hair dripping onto my shirt. They seemed to pick up on my sense of urgency because both of them nodded, lilac hair fluttering on the quick walk down the hall.

"They are about to leave." My lips pursed, they were going to leave without telling us, because they knew that we were going to want to go with them, for one reason or another. That was kind of insulting, even if they were just trying to keep us safe.

"Well, it's lucky that we caught them, then." Angela was muttering obscenities under her breath and I probably would have found it funny under other circumstances. As we hurried to try and salvage the situation, I felt kind of relieved.

The weight of what needed to happen was off my chest, and I hadn't broken my promise. Well, not technically anyway.

The huge front doors neared and we sprinted past the two maids, thanking them profusely.

"Good luck." They said, and we burst out of the doors, looking around wildly. No one was there and I cursed my luck.

"Fuck! We missed them!" Angela yelled.

"Language."

"Sorry."

"Anyway, yeah, we did." A sense of hysteria was beginning to build in my chest, but I didn't mention it because we didn't need two people freaking out.

—

"Wait, let me see if I can tell Hiei what's going on!" I said hurriedly, and then stopped, focusing to open up the channel in my head. It was much harder now that he wasn't constantly connected to my body, but I could still do it.

Eva was waiting, hoping that it would work.

_Hiei, this is really important._ And I simply relayed the memories. I didn't argue, I didn't put up with any crap, I didn't even care that I wasn't wearing anything in the memory, it was immensely important, so I sucked up the dent to my pride.

It still hurt though.

Seconds ticked past and for a moment, I thought that he was ignoring the message, but the connection finally crackled to life.

_How are you even awake?_ Was what he chose to ask. I was confused and then got the impression through the connection that something had been used on us to keep us asleep. If I had been able to reach through telepathic phone lines, I would have strangled him.

_We just are, now did you get my message or not?_ I asked irritably. He growled and I could nearly see the annoyed expression on his face, the one that hid worry, and nearly began shaking my head.

_I told Kurama. We got the idea, but no you can't join us._ My mouth actually dropped open. I had never imagined that I would truly have a reason to let my mouth drop open, but it had finally happened. Angrily, I closed the line with a zap, opening my eyes.

My stormy expression apparently tipped her off, because Eva sighed.

"Why are men so stubborn?" She said, looking uncertain of what to do. The late morning sun beating down on our heads made the whole problem seem very unreal, but I could see fight for power going on in Eva's head.

This was real, and Genkai was probably captured and my mate (more or less) was in danger. The demon energy in me shifted uneasily at that.

"What should we do?" I asked, but Eva didn't get the chance to answer.

"I have the answer to that." An annoyingly familiar voice stated. My expression turned to one of dead exhaustion, and I turned to look at the tall, handsome man behind me.

"Koenma." I nodded, but only because I had to.

"You do?!" Eva was far more excited about this then I was.

Botan leaned around his large form and I realized that there were more people behind him.

"You brought a freaking army, what for?" I asked, flabbergasted.

"The Old Ones are powerful, Angela. They can't beat them alone, and so they will not be meeting them alone." He said, and I realized that he was bringing the council for battle.

"I'm not even ready for a battle." I said, and Eva looked like she was in the same position as I was. We both had the potential to stop what was happening, but the skills that we needed to do so were unreachable. She needed her huge magic reserves and I needed my dragon, oh, and there was Lasciel. "And how do you even know any of this?"

His eyes suddenly seemed very old indeed as he looked at me.

"I was there." Which was why he had returned my dragon to me, and why he had placed Eva in Kurama's care, and why… It all added up how everything had come together in just the right way. Eva was looking at Koenma slightly forlornly, but I didn't mention it. "And I can help with that." Two people emerged from the crowd and I recognized them as Mukurou and Yomi, two of the leaders in Demon World.

I felt very small.

Eva seemed tiny when next to Yomi, even more then when she was with Kurama, which I had thought was impossible.

"I know how to help with the dragon." The woman said to me, and I finally recognized the person who had placed Cute back in me in the first place as that woman. I nodded slowly. So the other tall, foreboding man was supposed to help Eva then.

"I'll go find them ahead of you. Get there the moment you can." Koenma stated, and then nodded to the people behind him, which had thinned out to the big fighters. They practically evaporated as they took off and the others had gone back inside. Eva and I were practically alone again.

"Guess we'd better get to work." Everyone nodded in agreement and we did exactly that.

"It's a good thing that the girls warned us." Kurama said calmly. I snorted, but agreed with him. Without the warning, we probably would have had an issue simply expecting to find some weapon, but instead finding a whole army too.

That would have been a big problem.

"I would never have imagined that the thing would be hidden in Human World, though." Kuwabara said, and it irked me to find that I agreed with him too. Whatever, I had thought that first. It had been smart of the group that had hidden it, actually.

It was neutral land, and so it made sense that was where they put it. Besides, humans didn't have magic, so if by some crazed chance someone found what we were looking for they wouldn't be able to use it because you needed to have magic and it wasn't normal for humans.

"We're almost to the portal."

"About time!" Yuusuke finally spoke up and he seemed excited by the prospect of going back to Human World. I nearly sneered at his excitement, because it probably stemmed from his stupid woman, and I couldn't really say much, so I just decided not to say anything at all.

The huge mouth of the portal loomed in front of us, and we didn't wait on leaping through. We kept it to be as short of a process as possible because we really needed to be finished in time to still get there to stop everything from going down.

The other team didn't have their leader, so that was probably working in our favor, which would have been nice, because not many things had been working in our favor at that point. The enemy had always been more then a few steps ahead and it wasn't until recently that we had even been certain that something was truly wrong, though Kurama had had his suspicions for months.

Why he made the choices he did, I would never understand, but I didn't question him either.

I jut decided to ignore it, because to be honest it didn't really matter to me.

"How far away are we?" Kurama asked as we emerged in Human World. I checked the Jagan, searching for the energy signature that Genkai (or the enemy) had specified. It was surprisingly close.

In fact.

"The thing is under the temple." I finally said.

It made sense really, but that didn't meant that none of us were struck speechless. It was a safe place, and that temple was very, very old and had always been protected by one of Genkai's family members, but what was really shocking was what I learned next.

"And what's the situation around it."

"The enemy is already there." Everyone tensed, my eyebrows furrowed as I frowned, and then my eyes widened in surprise. "The object is actually pretty small."

We didn't spend time thinking about it, we just began to hurry to the place where the battling would be going down.

The Old Ones don't look old. They look like a huge gaggle of annoying teenagers drunk off of power, but none of us were fooled. The latent energy in the air was actually more then a little bit overwhelming, and when I finally laid eyes on the weapon, I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't a book.

They were standing in front of the temple, as if they had been waiting for us, and there was a bit of crazed look to the people's eyes. I recognized it, these people were being controlled by the Old Ones, not that it mattered to me.

And some of them were women. There were only six people and it was an even split down the middle, three men and three women.

"You fought Eva once, right?" Yuusuke asked Kurama. He seemed to glare slightly, but nodded. "It wasn't too hard, right?" The fox demon seemed a bit perturbed.

"I think we can beat them." He avoided the question and that put a little more on edge. My thumb slid down the outline of my dragon on the hilt of my sword. The imprint always reminded me of Angela, which was stupidly and grossly sentimental.

Sometimes I wanted to remove the guard, other times I rather liked it.

"This is all the Spirit World could muster." One of the girls hissed out, seemingly cackling, and you could hear the contempt dripping from each and every word. First I rolled my eyes, then I scoffed.

"We weren't sent by them." The girl's eyes widened, and I noticed that they had a sort of similar shade to Angela's, but they weren't as bright and were in fact closer to the ugly color of dirt pond water. They didn't seem worth comparing all of a sudden.

"Then we have no reason to fight you." And she turned. I nearly teleported forward, my blade pressing into her neck in a millisecond.

"Hand us the book, and that sounds like an idea." I said, feeling the dangerous grin I kept when fighting pull up the corners of my lips.

She seemed to hold her breath and then began to laugh.

"As if you could hurt me, puny fire demon." The millennia old fallen angel said, and the chaos of battle descended. We were putting in our everything, but even then, we were barely holding our ground.

There were only six of them, but it felt like they were everywhere at once, hissing and cackling, and fires sprouted and the world began to burn and crack apart, parts of the temple crashing to the ground violently, wood splintering, blood pouring into one eye.

I wanted to save the dragon until I was certain of its necessity, but I wasn't sure that out best attacks could wait much longer.

For once, I wasn't sure of who the winner would be, and the dragon of the darkness flame came roaring out of my arm with a vengeance, tearing across the stone courtyard, bright flashes of energy and yells echoing, the sky began to look like more of a muddy brown and none of us understood what attacks which one was using.

We were on the losing side.

"Hiei!" I screamed and saw the battle reigning down and the blood splattering the ground. It was my worst nightmare come true. They were down and there was no one standing but the enemy, far in the sky, lording over a destroyed home that I had spent months in.

I saw it, far up in the air, a small woman with oddly pink hair, held limp in the hand of one of the sadistic fighters. We immediately readied attacks, but they held up the old woman, and a girl held one glowing finger to her neck.

"Spirit World." She said, her hissing, dry voice ringing out in the clearing. Eva suddenly began to shake next to me and I looked over to see that one of her eyes was a glowing gold. She looked horrified, but frozen, and collapsed to one knee. I rushed over and held her up as Koenma kept the girl busy. "You have grown weak."

The shivering grew worse. She was fighting for control, and fighting hard.

"Old Ones." Koenma said back, just as vehement, just as angry.

"Leave, and I will spare the woman." She said, and my head jerked to him, begging with my eyes.

"Isn't there a better arrangement?" He asked, stalling for time. The humming of the open portal behind us was the only noise in a sudden silence. My brain clicked at high-speed as I tried to figure out what to do.

"Die, and I will spare the woman then." The floating girl snarled. Her clothes were rather tattered-looking and her eyes glowed a sickly green color. A nasty smile spread across her mouth, almost too big to be humanly possible. She reminded me of the joker.

Spoiler, clowns terrify me.

Koenma answered negatively. Normally the enemy hesitates before getting rid of the hostage, but there was no hesitation. A beam of light shot through Genkai's neck even as she jerked awake and then she was unceremoniously dropped out of the sky.

I watched her plummeting and my legs moved automatically. I don't know what came over me, but it was like all the blockage stopping me from functioning correctly short-circuited. I short-circuited. This was out of my control. The entire world felt like it was moving in slow-motion.

The tattoo on my back began to burn, even as the old hag dropped heavily into my arms. Heat spread across my skin, and it turned to a violent red color. The feeling spread into my fingertips, and it hurt, like I was getting electrocuted. My head jerked toward them and Eva was holding onto my hands, one glowing gold eye squinted shut, the other looking straight at me.

She was shoving energy into me. Magical energy. Why? Sweat beaded along her hairline and the gold eye began to dim. Blood continued to pour onto my arm and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus on absorbing the excess magic. It was too much though.

I didn't have even half of what she was pouring. No, not even a third and the amount was dropping by the second. The gold was nearly gone when a screech sounded and the figure in my arms coughed, this horrid, wet hacking noise.

Shrapnel ripped into the soft skin of my ear and eyebrow, more screeching. I gasped and held the figure closer. I had enough energy, I could heal her. Or I was going to die trying.

There was a tiny whisper in my ear, and it was only then that I realized that I'd been babbling aloud.

"Angela. Eva." It was so small, and her voice gargled. My jaw clenched. "Run." She whispered. We looked up and then there was a sucking feeling as the portal behind us began to close suddenly. It was a split-second decision, but I threw the both of us through just as it slammed shut.

Everything went abruptly quiet. No more fighting, no screaming, the billowing heat didn't blister the skin on my arms, the smoke and magic wasn't making my eyes sting, my body wasn't trying to rip itself in half. In fact, I could hear birds twittering, and the wind blowing. The only unnatural noise was the harsh breathing of the two people next to me.

"Angela?" I asked, coughing and wheezing slightly. My left eye was still throbbing and I kept it shut, the voice in the back of my head had quieted slightly, but I could still feel an immense amount of pressure to start ripping things apart.

The spell my mother had used had been torn to shreds. I didn't know how I was still in control, only that I was. Miraculously.

"Present." She answered and then a funny choked noise left her throat. I coughed again and looked over, sucking in sharply.

"Genkai!" I cried, scrambling to my knees and leaning over her pale, gurgling form. Blood was staining the ground from her neck and I bit my lip. She looked up slowly, eyes bleary and unfocused. Angela was staring down fearfully, blue eyes narrowed and chewing on her lip. The glowing hand held to her neck was brushed off by the old lady.

"Listen up." She said, pausing to take a rattling breath. The sun felt unnatural shining on the scene. I bit my lip almost hard enough to make it bleed. "The book… can only be… destroyed by… that thing." She gestured weakly to Angela, no to her back and the blond girl rubbernecked to look at something with an odd sense of sadness. "But you…" Gray eyes narrowed at me, almost sharply, I could almost tell myself that none of this was happening.

"You have to stop them." She said. My face drained. She knew, she absolutely knew what I had to do. "And you have to…" She yanked me close with a shocking amount of strength. The last of what she said was whispered.

"- Now go." I stood fluidly, my heart suddenly filled with a shocking amount of determination. My confusion and fear had to be pushed to the backseat. Even if it was at the cost of my own life, I had to stop them, the Old Ones, the things that I had read about. The bringers of the end of the word.

Angela hesitated.

I almost snapped at her, but Genkai beat me to it.

"Idiot." She bowed her head, and I could see the strength draining. It suddenly hit me how much blood was on the grass. A cloud passed over the sun and it became dark. "You can do this. Have faith and tell Yuusuke I- Hngh." Her eyebrows furrowed and then she went limp.

Nobody moved as it went literally silent.

Angela slumped.

"Genkai?" It was a small voice, one I had heard so many times from my own mouth, the voice of someone who was afraid and didn't know what to do. "What? Tell Yuusuke what?! Genkai!" The last word peaked and birds rushed out of a nearby tree.

I placed my hand on her shoulder and she moved to bat it away with an angered growl, but stopped abruptly and then her shoulders shook and she let out a tiny cry; a quiet keen in the back of her throat. The world blurred for me too.

Then I took a deep breath, and let it out. The sound was nearly mirrored by Angela. We both stood.

It was quiet again.

"Time to go."

I sniffed and wiped off my face.

"Right."

You could feel it when it happened. The entire battlefield quivered and quaked and then all of the portals snapped shut at once, all of the available energy from the others worlds stopped abruptly and there was an alarming amount of demon energy suffocating the air suddenly.

My back stiffened and I looked to Hiei for an explanation, but then remembered that he had followed the two women. They had to be there, that was a truth that we had to come to terms with. Something was happening that was beyond our understanding, or more like rapidly becoming clear.

Koenma had briefed us the moment all hell broke loose with Genkai. Hiei had gone through and then only seconds later whatever was going on happened. There was a screeching in the air and cackling and I reached out to rip open a portal, but that was what had gone wrong.

They were closed off.

We were trapped.

Spirit world and the few of us who weren't with them switched from an almost winning offensive to defensive, tensing under the pressure suddenly pouring in from all sides. The angels let up and disappeared into the sky. Nobody followed because we were all searching, confused, for the reason.

"Shit." I cursed, and then raised my voice, as panicked as I could get. "It's a trap! Get back, now! Now, now, now!" I yelled, only getting louder as an airborne attack came into view through my sharpened vision.

Only twenty minutes had passed, but an veritable army of demons came into view. Angry demons, and all of the were out for our blood, because of the new rules.

Pandemonium threatened to break out as we pressed, back to back, into tight units. There was no back-up, no calls, only the special-defense-force, some strong demons and the failed spirit-detective's group. At most, forty people, and then you had to subtract the ones lying on the ground. Lost.

Thirty-two.

It was like the quiet before the storm. The swarm was a ways away and the angels above weren't attacking. They gloated far above in silent glee, looking down at us like tiny bugs to crush under large feet; I was angry, but admittedly still mildly impressed. What was there to do?

Nobody, not even all of us put together, could break the spell that had just been cast. It made portals and Hiei's dragon and even many of my own magic look paltry, like toys for toddlers in a play-pen.

"Got a plan?" A voice whispered. Yuusuke. He looked worse for wear, dust and ash lining his face and eyes, hair singed, but his eyes had a glint that told he had plenty left. The others were in the same boat.

"Thinking." More then one person tensed. Then I thought of Hiei and closed my eyes. "We wait. Hold for as long as we can." I answered. They nodded.

_And pray._

I added silently.

The first wave descended and it began, magic drained fast because when you killed one it was just replaced by another. Easy demons, lots of d-class, but I could feel that there were a few a and above hidden in the flurry. Koenma was staying in the center of his little quadrant, barking orders and feeding the SDF magic at times. He had tried to break whatever was blocking the portals, but failed.

It was odd, normally I would find battle exciting, invigorating. I was rather violent, or at least had the tendency to enjoy bloodshed, but I didn't want any of it. The longer things dragged out the worse I felt. I just wanted to be back at my apartment, eating chips and arguing about the humor in British comedy with Eva.

I felt sick as my more and more blood splattered across the ground, onto the flowers, as hundreds of lives ended by my hand. It had never really bothered me so much before, or at least, I was able to ignore it.

The angels above only gloated darkly. No interference from them and if things continued as they were going, they were right to do so.

"We need your help." I said, staring down the women in front of me. They were tall, and beautiful, and foreign, and terrifying. Other leaders littered the area in front of me and I knew that jet one could crush me without even batting an eyelash. The queens of summer and winter stared at me coolly, as well as the leaders of Demon World.

"Why would we do that?" Mab. She was mocking me. She knew because any and all movement between worlds had stopped moments before and she knew because her eyes had been following my back for the entirety of the meeting.

I opened my mouth to answer, but Eva calmly put her hand over my mouth.

"Look, the world is about to end in-" she glanced at the sky, "three hours, give or take, and unless you've decided that you hate the way things are and humans and having control over your own realm then I highly suggest that you quit beating around the bush and get your asses to the battlefield." Her voice was harsh, labored and angry.

There was no patience. She had bypassed their games.

"The container of Lasciel." Eva winced and her gold eye glowed brighter, sharper. Her hand was painful on my face, I pushed it off and sent her a look.

"I know that none of you are interested in following some dumb teenagers, and I'm not asking you to. You wanted answers and you get them. The Old Ones aren't waiting for you or me and the portals are on lockdown. Now, Eva can break the spell-" A few sharp looks in her direction. She was barely standing on her own at the point and I could feel energy throbbing through her skin, tainting the air. "- but there is an army on the other side. The forty people standing for your freedom can't do it alone, and I know that there's no love lost between you guys and the Spirit World, but I like my universe not destroyed." Silence. "_Please._"

"Okay." For the first time, and probably last time, in known history Fae and Demon alike banded together to fight against a common enemy.

It was a whirlwind, demons began to arrive and the fae also, magic filtering in the air. Eva sat and didn't do much else. She was meditating, I think. Nobody bothered her due to the fact that she was radiating more energy then anyone, except for perhaps the queens and maybe the demon king.

He was a big guy, legend too, terrifying.

I got the feeling that she was trying to access the rest of it, or at least that's the idea I got when I asked. It was pretty garbled seeing as she wasn't entirely herself; too volatile, too inhuman, too something other then anything there. It was getting crazed and disagreements were breaking out and pandemonium was beginning to set in. You could see the leaders beginning to rethink their choices, or at least, that was the case until Hiei arrived.

I was more surprised then anyone, to be honest. I had been hiding, basically, from the angry glares being set at me, or the interested ones at the glowing tattoo on my back. It had been growing steadily brighter as the minutes ticked past. Two hours passed agonizingly.

"Angela." I tensed and spun around from where I had been observing from in a tree. My eyes widened comically.

"Hiei!" I gaped kind of like a fish. "I- you- portals- Eva- whatareyoudoinghere?" I finally spat out. His eyes panned over the army that was amassing not so far away from his home (after all, that was where the portal originated from) and his mouth twitched upward.

"To chat, obviously." He answered sarcastically, rolling his maraschino eyes. A grin began to pull at my mouth. "I came to help."

I gasped dramatically, just for him.

"For me? Oh, Hiei, you wouldn't." He snorted.

"You're right, I wouldn't. Now get your ass moving." We, well mostly Hiei, got the army in line, and not a moment too soon because a spectacular light show suddenly began emanating from Eva.

It was time.

I suspected that something was happening the moment the lead angel jumped and began whispering to her giant second-in-command. I thought that perhaps they were going to attack because the tides had turned and it was all we could do to stay alive. There was no end to the hoard and they just keep coming out of the trees, the ground, the air, the sky was dark with a mist of blood, ash and darkness. Then there was a massive boom and the ground quaked and bright light lit up the entire nightmarish scene, blinding everything.

It continued until there was a giant cracking noise and then the leftovers of a spell shattered all over the ground, shards of magic falling through the air and winking out of existence. It was actually quite beautiful.

Then the portals opened and demons and fae alike poured through, leaving a screeching swath of destruction for the enemy in their wake. Eva and Angela had come through.

Battle restarted with a vengeance, but I leapt upwards, trying to find the missing people in the chaos, but it was too hard to see and spells and weapons were flying in every direction. There was a massive battle raging in the sky and my heart nearly stopped when the spirit of Yoko crashed into me like a sledgehammer and I was invited into the war going in Eva's head.

She was completely taken over, as was I, and I could feel a massive hatred for Lasciel there. That was where he had been, inside of Eva's head, defending, protecting, plotting. As per usual he had waited until the opportune moment and struck. Lasciel was weak and Yoko was at one of the strongest points he had ever been at.

The spirit slid over me like comfortable, familiar clothing I waged war against my long-time enemy in the sky. I hadn't even made the connection and normally I didn't want what Yoko wanted and fought against his control, but it was okay then. She had to be destroyed.

She was, but so was Yoko. And he had known all along that it was going to happen, expected it even. As abruptly as it had started, it ended. Lasciel was savagely snuffed out and the light of the fox demon dimmed, then slipped from my mind like a shadow and into Eva's.

But not without a quiet goodbye.

'You helped honorably.' The fox murmured, and I looked to the friend that had helped to protect me from so many nightmares. He was flickering in and out of existence, winking like a flame. I felt the huge soul of the fallen-angel lift from my shoulders and everything became clear. I threw my arms around his neck and nodded.

"Thank you." The snow falling from the birch-trees and the white-and-black bark, the whole scene began to fade like the dream it was and I sobbed, holding tighter. He chuckled quietly.

'He made a good choice.' And I was thrust back into reality. Thousands of feet above earth and with a start I realized that I was plummeting through the air like a comet and screamed. Muscular arms wrapped around my small body and a hundred nerves told me that I shouldn't move again for a long while.

The smell of oranges and dark-chocolate reached my nose and I looked up at the man holding me. For a moment, there was only emerald and I could see clearly. Everything seemed amazing. There was cheering from below and we both looked down, wrenching away to see that the last of the other demons were turning to run and the other of the fallen, the Old Ones were being wrenched out of existence by the queens and demon lords themselves.

Glittering, immortal beings. I looked back up and for a second Shuuichi's eyes were warm gold, but then I blinked and it was gone. It was an awesome sight when a huge white dragon pierced the tiny cause of all of that heartache and the darkness exploded into non-existence. We had a great view.

Angela yelled and I could nearly hear it. We descended to earth and it was over. The danger was past.

I shuddered and felt the other worlds press against me, felt the last dregs of magic remind me of what was to come.

For me, the battle had not ended.

Ashes fell through the air like snow, descending slowly onto everything in sight like a muffled blanket. Like small whispers coming to a rest of the burnt grass, the cracked columns. For days it rained ash, and then it just rained, and rained, and rained.

It was as if the world was trying to wash away the horrid trial that it had laid witness to. The destroyed book was somewhere in those ashes, forever laid waste to. The ashes of the old ones were somewhere in that rain and now deep in the ground, scattered, destroyed.

I sat on a broken column and it was blissfully quiet. The rain dripped from the awning in front of me, and I just enjoyed the silence, both in my head and in my surroundings. She was gone, and so was the spirit of Yoko, who had been using my consciousness as a battleground for months.

My memories were clear, and I felt more at peace then I had in longer then I could remember. I stared, dry-eyed, out at the rain.

"Peaceful, isn't it?" Shuuichi's voice asked as he ducked through one of the many mostly broken doors. I simply nodded, but after a few seconds sighed.

"It's so quiet." I said. He nodded and nearly laughed at that.

"But something's wrong."

I sighed and then looked up at him.

"I hate that you're so perceptive." I looked out toward the rain and felt fear crawl into my heart. "The Old Ones didn't belong here. The spell I used will transport me to wherever they came from so I can finish the job." He seemed very sobered by that fact. His tall form lingered by the shattered frame.

"Because of the prophecy?" I glanced back.

"Something like that." I said vaguely. "I don't know what's going to happen to me." I added and looked down at my small hands.

His green eyes were heavy on my head and then he walked over and sat down next to me.

"I can wait." Normally our relationship wasn't a very physical one, but more of a moral support. Shuuichi seemed untouchable at times, and far away from me, but now that I wasn't certain when I would come back, or if I would, or what I was going to face, it was different. There were so many unknowns that I wanted to create at least one less.

I took a deep breath and leaned forward, pressing my lips to his and holding on tightly. He seemed to freeze, but then pulled me close enough that I could almost feel his want for me to stay. It was sort of sparkish, like some part of my heart jumped and then started beating faster, like my whole body was just suddenly hyper-aware of how much I wanted to stay.

We pulled away with a gasp and I was blushing and he was just sort of raising an eyebrow at me. Rolling my eyes I leaned away and punched his shoulder.

"You'd better."

—

I'm not going to say something poetic and meaningful to describe what had happened. Things had gone down, people were dead, there was a lot that had to be rebuilt and a lot of things that had to be postponed. Koenma was busy over the next few days, explaining away what had happened to the temple and doing paperwork and diligently working away.

It was his way of dealing with Genkai, I think.

I was in Hiei's house/castle, away from the destruction, and tried to sleep.

I couldn't do it though. No, seriously, I was tossing and turning, lying still, throwing off the covers, putting them back on, cracked the door, counted sheep, stared at the ceiling, everything. Finally, my frustration pulled me away from the covers and out into the kitchen. The tiles were cold against my bare feet, and the lights were a bit harsh, but I welcomed i comfort. The sweat slipping down my hairline began to dry and the ache that had built up behind my eyes began to diffuse.

I had never been very good at forcing myself to sleep. When I was tired, I was tired, but when I wasn't, I couldn't get my brain to turn off, or if I was stressed out, the same thing would happen. Really, if I was being honest with myself, it was a very destructive habit. Not only did I lose sleep, but it did not help with solving my problems.

Honesty is brutal.

I sat down in a chair at the marble counter and swung my feet with nervous energy. I didn't even know that I was doing it really, it was more of a habit then anything. When I was unhappy, I just couldn't quit fidgeting. Again, destructive habit. If I continued along that honesty streak, I would come to another conclusion.

I was very, very upset.

Staring at my scarred nails and not thinking of anything at all was all I could do to reign in everything. I just took all of my unhappiness and anger and discomfort and feelings and shoved them all in a neat little box in the back of my head that would eventually explode as some brand of irrational anger.

I'm just full of destructive habits, aren't I?

A moment later I stood abruptly. I took my frustrations out on the kitchen. No, not by throwing dishes, or hitting counters, or punching walls, I respected that home. I worked instead.

I attacked the mess in the kitchen with an almost religious fervor. Well, the most silent kind you can think of anyway. After about fifteen minutes of scrubbing, my hands were nearly raw and the kitchen sparkled and I didn't feel any better.

Almost unconsciously, I just continued on to other rooms until I found myself out of things to clean. It was one-thirty in the morning. I couldn't do any more without waking others up.

My feet carried me to my own room automatically and I was shocked to find that it was dirty. It wasn't for long. Breathless, I collapsed onto my bed and then took out a book, and then another, and another. Finally, it was two-thirty in the morning.

I didn't have anything else to do.

This made me angry for no real reason and I stalked from my pristine room angrily, bustling to the bathroom. Fine, if I couldn't work, I would just take a nice, relaxing shower. I was certain to be tired after that, right? So that's what I did. The water was super-heated and my hand was stinging and my headache was nearly gone.

I felt exhaustion creeping into my limbs and spun the dial to off, stepping out of the shower and drying off. I wrapped the towel around my body and then brushed my hair and teeth.

I'm fairly certain that's when I started crying.

The disappointment and sadness and frustration broke over me like a wave and I was on the floor, damp face pressed to my knees just shaking. This wasn't happening. Everything was right, but it was all wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. Why did couldn't good things just go right in my life? Why is it that everything had to go away?

And why is it that I brought it onto myself?

No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I could never do anything right. I tried, but it would never be enough. She was gone. Genkai was gone and it was my fault. My distraction, my failure, my presence had sealed her fate. She had truly believed in me, and now she was gone.

My tears began to dry up as I closed my eyes.

I got up and shuffled back toward my room. I had company though and my face paled considerably, as I was suddenly filled with the urge to run. I couldn't handle it. I shied away from his bright red eyes. They were too deep, too filled with an emotion I couldn't — wouldn't — name.

"Why are you up?" I bit my lip, and fought against those feelings.

"Couldn't sleep." I muttered, and a quiet, dark chuckle sounded.

"What's stopping you?" He asked, his voice a quiet, muted whisper. The words froze in my throat as my hand twitched. He waited. Patiently.

"I want her back." I said, and then swallowed. "But it was my fault, so I don't deserve her."

"No it wasn't." He said bluntly, and somehow it _meant_ something when he said it. "And she's in a better place anyway."

Finally, there was closure.

And I sighed, then shuffled the rest of the way forward and leaned forward pressing my lips against his. He jumped, but then pulled me closer, as if trying to fold us into one person. It was almost desperate, and I knew that it was my form of support, and somehow it wasn't about attraction it was about support and I pulled back, resting my head against his shoulder.

The demon energy in me was crackling almost wildly, but he didn't mention it, so neither did I. There was closure, and maybe hope because the one person I could stand didn't seem to mind having me around.

"Thanks." He snorted.

"You're welcome."

I still had a lot to learn and a lot to deal with, but with hope a lot can happen.

With hope and a little faith, anyway.

I looked up to the sky and, silently, thanked the answerer of my prayer.

_Thank you._


	4. Signed, Eva

We won the war.

It was violent and bloody and horrifying, but we won.

Not without losses, but it was worth it.

Hiei returned to Demon World to help rebuild, and Angela joined him there after paying her final respects to Genkai.

Kuwabara ended up losing most of his power and married Yukina, they took over in Genkai's place. They had twins and ended up moving out eventually, handing the place off to Kurama, who chooses to stay in his apartment.

Yuusuke returned to living with Keiko, and lost his spot on the council. He was glad to have the responsibility off of his shoulders anyway. As one final screw you to the council he handed his spot to me though.

Angela did eventually marry Hiei. They had a pretty rocky relationship, but eventually worked through their problems and ended up living in Demon World to rebuild it. She never did win the title of Demon King (queen), even though she did try. Somehow she actually convinced Hiei to have kids, though I still don't know how she did it.

Kurama? He went on to build one of the largest companies in Human World and donates most of the money to charity.

Yoko? Well, he went on to the wild-hunting-grounds, having redeemed himself and come to terms with many of the things that he's done. No one is quite certain exactly where all of his traps are, even to this day.

And me? I went on an adventure. In another time and another place I led a world to victory and Shuuichi lead his. I await the day when I can finally return after so many years to that world and build a life for myself.

I learned a lot, but mostly…

I learned to love.

"Kurama, sir." I held up a hand, showing her that I was busy. I had told her to wait, quite clearly actually, but she continued to insist. Finally, I hung up on the call I was already on, putting down my pen and phone.

"What?" I asked, exasperated. The late-afternoon sun poured through the window of my office. It was December and snow was falling. Lights sparkled, both colorful and white, making everything seem like a wonderland at times.

Someone I had know long before that would have loved it.

"There's a visitor for you, sir." I felt rather annoyed, wondering why she couldn't have just sent them away. "They said that they know you and very much insist."

Sighing and I nodded.

"I'll send them in." The secretary said, turning on her heel to go and retrieve the mystery person. I didn't know why, but I decided that I much preferred to walk. Rising from the leather seat, I brushed off my pants and walked toward the door, pony-tail swinging against my shoulder-blades.

"I'll meet them." She blinked in surprise, but nodded and we went out, going down the elevator. It had big glass windows the entire way and as we descended I noticed a small woman with black hair waiting by the desk.

There was a slight pang in my heart, it happened every time I saw a woman so pale with black hair of that shade. The elevator dinged quietly and we stepped out, walking across the busy first floor of the building. The closer we got the more I noticed the uncanny resemblance.

Finally, the woman turned and a cool set of blue eyes caught mine. I sucked in sharply, she stared as well.

"I'm back." Her hair was short, her voice was smoother.

It took me a second but-

"Welcome home… Eva."

A/N: There it is, guys. This is the end. Thanks for sticking with me for so long and I hope you guys liked it as much as I do. As always, R&R.

Oh, I feel so emotional right now.

~ Nami 3


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